


the poorer quarters, where the ragged people go

by Kyele



Series: a fighter by his trade [5]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Amputation, Anal Sex, Collars, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feels, Good BDSM, Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Oral Sex, Past Rape/Non-con, Rape Recovery, Safe Sane and Consensual, Subspace, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, Topping from the Bottom, Torture, angsty feels, blinding, explicit descriptions of torture, flaying, light caning, one ticket for the nine o'clock handbasket express please, past sexual slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-07 21:43:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 47,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4278990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyele/pseuds/Kyele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Jean will abandon himself gladly to Armand. Whatever Armand will order in the bedroom, Richelieu in the throne room, or the Cardinal in the sanctuary, Treville will fully obey. There is one point, and one point only, on which he intends to insist.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I want to watch,” Treville tells Richelieu, the very first moment he can get the Cardinal alone. “What you do to Rochefort – I want to watch.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The first chapter should be safe for all readers (especially if you've made it this far in the series). Chapters two and four contain explicit torture. Chapter three contains implicit torture. Please, please, _please_ read safely!

Richelieu’s return is almost an anticlimax. After all of the work, the fear, the pain of holding together in his absence – when the scales finally tip and all of Richelieu’s enemies come crashing down, there’s almost a sense of inevitability to it all.

Of course, the aftershocks will be felt for a long time to come. France had been dealt a blow by Richelieu’s apparent death from which she had never quite recovered. Rochefort and the others like him had had no interest in healing her; on the contrary, they’d exploited her injuries to scheme for their own power, and made them worse in the process. Richelieu’s resurrection is more like salt for the wounds than balm. Given time, Richelieu will heal France. But it will not be easy. Nor will it be swift.

Given time, Treville hopes Richelieu can heal him, too. After so long in Hell Treville is no longer sure what healing looks like. But Richelieu will remember the Treville who had been before. Armand had created Jean in the first place; surely he can put Jean back together again.

Jean will abandon himself gladly to Armand. Whatever Armand will order in the bedroom, Richelieu in the throne room, or the Cardinal in the sanctuary, Treville will fully obey. There is one point, and one point only, on which he intends to insist.

“I want to watch,” Treville tells Richelieu, the very first moment he can get the Cardinal alone. “What you do to Rochefort – I want to watch.”

They’re in the palace. Richelieu has only just returned to Paris, arrived this morning, and this is the first time he’s set foot in the Louvre for months. There has been no time for anything of a personal nature. And perhaps it’s wrong that Treville should seize their first opportunity to speak privately to speak of Rochefort. But Treville doesn’t care.

Richelieu looks surprised. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” he says carefully.

“I want to,” Treville insists. “I – I need to. Armand…”

Richelieu takes Treville by the arm and tugs him down the hallway. Treville goes willingly. There’s an empty office down at the end of the row; Richelieu steers him in there and closes the door.

“Shh,” Armand says. He opens his arms. Jean falls into them with something that is not quite a sob, burying his face in Armand’s shoulder and letting Armand pat him soothingly.

God, it’s indescribable. It’s like Heaven. Jean loses himself completely to the comfort of a touch given in love and with no intent to harm.

“Tell me why you want to watch,” Armand says after a few moments, when Jean has calmed down somewhat. “Tell me what you want to get out of it.”

“I don’t know,” Jean admits. He frees one hand from clutching the fabric of the Cardinal’s robes to swipe at his eyes in annoyance. “I don’t, I just feel – ”

“Like you have to,” Armand completes.

“Yes.”

Armand sighs. “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he repeats. “Jean, you’re very empathetic. You feel things very strongly. Things done to others as well as things done to yourself. It’s one of your greatest strengths; it makes you very good at what you do. But in this case it’s dangerous.”

“Rochefort didn’t care about my strengths,” Jean says stubbornly.

“He cared about them very much,” Armand contradicts. “He used them as weapons to hurt you.”

Jean shivers. Only half of it is from the memory of pain. The other half is from the cold, cruel edge Armand’s voice takes on. Paradoxically, it warms Jean from the inside out. Rochefort’s cruelty had meant pain. Richelieu’s means safety. Armand has always been able to do what Jean can’t.

But – “Yes. He hurt me. That’s why I have to watch. I have to see that he can be hurt, too.”

“It’s your decision,” Armand says after a moment.

“You won’t stop me?” Jean looks up, surprised.

That only seems to make Armand more coldly furious. “Did Rochefort do that to you? You’re not my slave. I don’t own you. I love you, and I’ll tell you truly I think you’re making a mistake, but it’s your mistake to make.”

Jean wells up again. He’d like to tell Armand exactly how much that means to him. But his throat closes up and he can’t speak. Armand seems to understand, anyway, if the way he holds Jean and lets Jean cry is any indication.

Jean thinks he should probably pull himself together. There’s a mountain of work waiting for them and too little time to do it in. But the ability to let himself go, to be weak, to give himself up to the safety of Armand’s arms is so incomprehensibly freeing that he’s helpless in the face of it.

A discreet knock on the door is what eventually jolts Jean back to himself. “Five minutes,” Jussac says, just loud enough to be heard.

Five minutes until their audience with the King, Jussac means. Jean shakes his head and makes himself step back from Armand. Has he really wasted half a precious hour just weeping? God, maybe Rochefort _is_ right, maybe he is just a weakling.

Slender, bony fingers seize his chin and jerk it upwards. Jean’s eyes fly up to meet Armand’s.

“You thought that so loudly that the Devil himself must have heard it,” Armand says. “If Rochefort had done nothing else, I’d kill him for that alone. Jean, you are the strongest man I’ve ever met.”

Traitorous tears start to well back up in Jean’s eyes. He fights them back. Fights for strength, for calm, for the familiar persona of the Captain of the Musketeers.

Richelieu helps, smoothing Treville’s tunic back in place and settling his sword-belt properly. That done, Richelieu draws Treville close and places a chaste kiss on his forehead.

“We should go,” Treville mutters.

“In a moment.” Richelieu reaches for Treville’s wrist and lifts it, pushing back the sleeve to reveal empty skin. He sighs. “Dare I ask?”

Jean stares at the place where his wrist-guard should be. “I had to stop wearing it,” he admits. “Rochefort – ”

“Shh. Tell me later.” Richelieu lays a gentle finger on Treville’s lips. Then he reaches up to his own neck and removes a chain. At the end of it is his crucifix. Not the ornate one that is a symbol of Richelieu’s office, but the smaller, humbler, personal one. It had been a gift from Susanne, Armand’s mother. When Armand had chosen to enter the Church. Treville’s never seen Richelieu without it; he wears it even when nude.

Now Armand lifts it off and drapes it around Jean’s neck. “There,” Richelieu says. “You must never forget that I am with you always.”

“But – ” Treville protests faintly.

Richelieu cuts him off with a kiss, this time. Then he lifts the crucifix around Treville’s neck and kisses that, too. “God’s protection is always with you,” Richelieu says. “And so is mine. I’ve never regretted anything so much as I regret leaving you for Rochefort. I had no idea of how insane he truly was. And I had no idea he would learn of our relationship. One day, I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Jean whispers.

Armand shakes his head. “There is a very great deal,” he disagrees. “I was wrong to leave you behind. I should have taken you with me. I thought I’d protected everything, only to discover that Rochefort had been able to lay his hands on my very soul.”

Jean chokes up. There’s no other word for it. Under Armand’s compassionate gaze, he doesn’t even remember to feel ashamed.

“I will make it right,” Richelieu promises. “I will make Rochefort pay. And if watching that is what you need, then you shall have it, beloved.”

Jussac knocks again. “Your Eminence, I’m sorry.”

“Come.” Richelieu lifts a corner of his robes to wipe Jean’s face dry. “Let us go speak to the King.”

The passage of the cloth over his face is transformative. Jean disappears, to be replaced by Captain Treville of the King’s Musketeers, who nods to the Cardinal.

The Cardinal smiles back. “Good. Hold onto that. The rest we can build from there.”

Richelieu beckons. With a deep breath, Treville follows the Cardinal to the throne room, there to speak to Louis about the redistribution of power.

* * *

Later, Treville stands in the center of the Captain’s bedroom and office in the Musketeers’ garrison and feels only a vague sense of disconnection. The rooms that have been his for so long are empty of his personal effects now. Once these rooms, and the position and identity they’d represented, had been central to his life. Before Richelieu – before Armand – they’d been the center of Jean’s identity. Even after Armand had given Jean meaning, beyond the vivid bursts of vitality found in the middle of battle, Treville had still been constructed around the Captaincy of the Musketeers.

He’d needed this place. This position. Needed it badly enough to cling to it even after it had been taken from him by Rochefort. Treville had remained in this office. Continued sleeping in this bed. Let his Musketeers call him “Captain” with defiance in their eyes. Striven to act according to that position even as the title had lain dormant, no longer his by right.

Love of this position had been what had led Treville to reject Louis’ offer of a Council seat shortly after Richelieu’s apparent death. And that rejection, in turn, had set the whole catastrophic set of events into motion. By leaving the seat vacant for Rochefort, Treville had been complicit in his own destruction. Treville doesn’t fool himself into thinking that Rochefort wouldn’t have found ways to seize power in spite of Treville. But if Treville hadn’t left himself open to the King’s displeasure – if Treville had seized the power and prestige offered to him – if Treville had established himself more as an equal to Rochefort, instead of deliberately placing himself in a subordinate position from the start –

“Captain?”

Treville sighs. “That’s not my title any more,” he says, turning to face the other man. “It’s yours now, in fact.”

Athos frowns. “You don’t have to accept the position on the King’s Council just because Richelieu is back,” he says. “I know that Rochefort – that his ministry was difficult for us all – but as much as we all dislike the Cardinal, he’s not going to pick up where Rochefort had left off. You don’t have to take the seat out of some misguided need to protect the rest of us.”

Treville can’t help laughing; it’s that or cry, and Athos wouldn’t understand the latter reaction. _He’s not going to pick up where Rochefort had left off._ Well, Athos has no way of knowing how much Jean hopes Armand will do just that.

“Rochefort opened my eyes to a number of truths,” Treville settles for saying. It’s the truth, which Athos deserves. At least, enough of it to pacify Treville’s conscience and still conceal his secrets.

Still, Treville finds he can’t quite meet Athos’ eyes. He turns away to avoid them, walking back over to the neatly made bed. A stack of clothes and a few personal effects still sit there, next to an empty carrying bag. Everything Treville will need for a few days. Louis has offered Treville rooms in the Louvre, as befitting his Minister for War. They’re being cleaned and set up now. Most of Treville’s possessions have already gone there. In the meanwhile, the Cardinal has graciously offered the Minister space in his home. Treville could have demurred. Louis wouldn’t have minded Treville remaining at the garrison a few more days. It would have made the transition to Athos’ Captaincy smoother.

Smoother for the regiment. More difficult for Treville. More than anything, Treville just wants to crawl into a dark corner, somewhere safe, and lick his wounds. The opportunity to dwell in Richelieu’s house – even temporarily – affords just that. And with the excuse of Rochefort’s interrogation to hand, Treville can afford to take that opportunity, without worrying overmuch about the consequences. In the normal course of things the Captain of the Musketeers would never accept the hospitality of his nemesis Cardinal Richelieu. But the course of things in France has not been normal for a while. Between Rochefort’s perfidy, Louis’ illness, the treason accusations against the Queen and the questions surrounding the Dauphin’s parentage, the string of multiple high-profile deaths and the looming war with Spain, suddenly an accord between the once-Captain and the future-Cardinal is unremarkable.

Unremarkable, that is, to Louis’ court. The Musketeers’ concerns are smaller, even having borne no small portion of Rochefort’s destructive focus.

As Athos is demonstrating now. “That doesn’t sound like the Captain I know,” he says, somewhat angrily. “You turned this position down the first time. If you’re not doing it because of Rochefort – ”

“France is entering a very turbulent period. I don’t want to just sit back and take the bumps as they come. I tried that with Rochefort, and I didn’t like the results.”

“I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but surely you can be more confident that Richelieu has France’s best interests at heart.”

Treville snorts. Let Athos think it’s derision; it is, but the derision is aimed at how ignorant Athos truly is, though the Musketeer thinks himself wise. Treville could give Athos a thousand examples of how devoted to France Armand truly is. But let it lie. France needs a bogeyman. Armand is uniquely suited to the role, and there’s no denying that his moral code, while ironclad, sits considerably farther to the left than Jean’s.

Once that had been a problem. In the time before, Treville and Richelieu had frequently clashed over Richelieu’s ruthlessness. Now Treville wholeheartedly approves of everything Richelieu is doing. That frightens him, too.

“If I want to be involved in decisions, I have to be sitting at the table,” Treville says aloud. “If that means I have to sit next to the Cardinal – ” _then all the better,_ he doesn’t say. “ – then that’s what I’ll do.”

The lines on Athos’ face deepens as he frowns. “At least talk to the King about his foolish plan,” Athos says. “Moving into the palace?”

“It will keep me near him.” _And near Armand._

“And assigning you to help oversee Rochefort’s interrogation!”

Treville does raise an eyebrow at this. “You’d prefer to leave it all to the Cardinal?”

“Treville.” Athos steps further into the room and nudges the door closed behind him. “Richelieu is going to torture Rochefort. Bad enough that the King will let him do it. Why on earth would the King make you _watch_?”

 _He wouldn’t_ , Treville wants to say. _It had never crossed his mind until Armand suggested it. Nor would it have crossed Armand’s had_ I _not demanded it. You’re angry, but the fault is mine._

Treville won’t say that, though. To say that would be to suggest things to Athos that Treville would prefer stay hidden. Athos will believe that Richelieu had suggested it to punish or hurt Treville, as part of their long-running feud. Athos will be furious. Possibly even furious enough to act.

And if Treville admits that Richelieu had only suggested such a thing because Treville himself had demanded it –

Instead Treville puts anger into his tone. “Rochefort was spying for Spain,” he says, shoving the last few items into his bag and yanking on the drawstrings with more force than necessary. “The same country we’re about to fight a war with. If you don’t think there’s military and strategic value to what Rochefort might spill, then I question having nominated you for the Captaincy of the Musketeers.” Treville picks up the bag and turns, gratified to see that two bright spots of anger have appeared on Athos’ well-bred visage.

“I remember a Captain who’d rather fight blind than torture someone for sight,” Athos grates out.

With a dull pang, Treville remembers that man, too, and some of his anger ebbs.

“That Captain is gone,” he says. There’s too much truth in the statement: it lies in his voice, heavy, and the air seems weighted with loss.

“Then I will hope that the Minister who replaces him will find the same humanity within him.”

The sentiment cuts. Treville feels it, but the sharp edge bounces, blunted by the steel wool of self-loathing.

Rochefort has changed him. Destroyed him, really. Sought to remake Treville in Rochefort’s image. Treville doesn’t think Rochefort had succeeded, but he’s not sure that the person he’s constructed for himself to resist Rochefort is truly any better.

The old familiar panic chokes him. Treville can’t stay here any longer. This room is Athos’ now, and even if it weren’t, it isn’t Treville’s. Can’t be. Not any more. Not this new Treville.

Treville pushes past Athos, bag over his shoulder. At the door he pauses.

“If it helps,” he says, “I do too.”

Leaving Athos behind to think that over, Treville leaves the garrison, and points his horse’s head towards the Palais-Cardinal.

* * *

Richelieu is alighting from his carriage as Treville reaches the Palais-Cardinal. “Excellent timing,” Richelieu greets him. “I was hoping I would be able to show you to your chambers myself.”

“My chambers?” Treville tries to keep the emotions out of his voice. They’re still in public. Hostlers are leading away Treville’s horse and Richelieu’s carriage team; other servants are swarming around. While the house-servants are chosen for their discretion, the Palais-Cardinal is a massive complex that supports more than just Richelieu’s personal dwelling. Even Richelieu cannot screen every hostler and squire. Or rather, he could, but it would be a waste of effort – and suspicious, too.

Which means that Treville absolutely cannot allow his sudden dismay to show. _My chambers?_ When Treville is here, he stays with Richelieu. A guest bedroom is usually done up for show, but Richelieu has never before suggested Treville actually sleep there.

A dozen possible reasons for Richelieu to have assigned Treville separate chambers crowd into Treville’s head. None of them are good. Jean struggles not to think on them, beating them back with the immutable truths of his life: Armand loves him. Armand will never give up on him. Armand always, _always_ has a good reason for what he does.

Richelieu seems to sense that this conversation is veering into personal grounds. He takes Treville’s elbow and steers him indoors.

“I thought you would prefer separate chambers,” Richelieu says softly, once they’re safely behind closed doors. “Both as a point of retreat from me, should you need one, and because of the negative associations with my chambers. Was I wrong?”

Treville’s jaw drops. “Your chambers? You mean – ”

“I am once again in my customary rooms.”

“ _Why_?” The cry is involuntary and heartfelt.

“I won’t permit Rochefort to retain any power whatsoever,” Richelieu says simply. “I had this palace built; those chambers were designed to my specifications. They are mine, not his. He may have profaned them for a time, but you do not cast away your sword because it becomes soiled with the blood of your enemies. You merely clean your sword.”

For a long moment Treville can’t speak. Memories swamp him, coming fast and furious, pulling him under like a riptide. Standing in the Palais-Cardinal is hard enough; Rochefort hadn’t confined his depredations solely to the bedroom. But the bedroom had been the primary site. Every corner of that room holds a ghost now. Every object is haunted.

“I don’t know if I can look at it that way,” Treville says at last, low and troubled.

“I know,” Richelieu says. “That’s why I had separate chambers prepared.”

A good reason. An excellent reason, even. Armand has been thinking ahead. Anticipating Jean’s needs and meeting them. It’s wonderful, isn’t it? It’s all Jean has hoped for, these last, hellish months.

And yet, as reassuring as one part of Jean finds Armand’s consideration, another part of him wails in dismay. To sleep elsewhere is to be exiled from Armand’s presence. And isn’t it just another example of Jean’s weakness, that he can’t move past Rochefort so easily as Armand has done?

Armand interrupts this train of thought by reaching out and placing a finger under Jean’s chin, tipping it up. “You are not evicted,” he scolds. “If you are able and willing to stay with me, in my chambers, in my bed, you are most joyously welcome. If you need to stay apart, for your own health, it is permitted and encouraged.”

Jean tries to smile. He doesn’t delude himself that he succeeds, but Armand sees him trying and gives him a smile of his own, in praise and reward.

“Am I near you?” Jean asks. His throat feels dry; he swallows.

“Extremely,” Armand says. He tucks Jean’s arm more firmly under his and guides Jean down the corridor that leads back to the private wing. Armand keeps his chambers there, along with other personal spaces: the small private dining room, the office. The servants back here are all handpicked. None of them will gossip. They all have some loyalty to Richelieu that goes beyond money.

“The guest chambers are in the other wing,” Jean says, confused, as Armand leads him on.

“You are not a guest,” Armand replies. He comes to a halt before a door. Jean stares at it, confused. They’re one door shy of the doors to Armand’s own chambers. He’s been all over the Palais-Cardinal, but something in his brain is stuttering over the knowledge of what lies behind this door.

Armand opens it. “These have been prepared for you.”

The Palais-Cardinal had been built for a priest, but Armand has other family who may inherit it. He’s also spoken of giving it to the crown, or even, perhaps, turning it into a school. He’d taken all of that into account when building it. As a result, it contains rooms Armand himself may never need.

Including an adjoining suite intended for the lady of the house.

Jean steps in dazedly. He remembers these rooms now; he’d seen them briefly during his first tour of the Palais-Cardinal. Never since. Most of the court believes that Richelieu uses them for the mistresses he officially doesn’t have. Jean knows better. Armand violates his vow of chastity, but rarely with women. He’s had a few mistresses over the years Jean has been his. But they’ve all been chosen for some reason besides their bodies, such as Adele, the Spanish spy. Certainly none of them have ever been lodged in the Palais-Cardinal. None of them have ever held a place in Armand’s private life, only in Richelieu’s public one. These rooms have been shut up, unused, for as long as Jean’s known Armand.

No longer. Now there’s a fire burning in the grate, and the bed has been made new. Lavender scents the air and the sheets have obviously been aired. Jean’s possessions had been taken to the Louvre, but he sees things that are obviously meant for him, things that closely resemble those Jean had chosen himself, though higher-quality and better-made.

“If you need anything else, it will be brought to you,” Armand says, following Jean’s gaze.

“What else could I need?” Jean breathes. He means it literally, looking at the piles of clothes, the shaving kit, the dressing-gown. Armand has furnished this room as if Jean is to remain forever. It makes Jean’s breath catch and his heart tighten. He wishes so much that he could.

Armand’s smile reappears, heartbreakingly grateful. Only then does Jean realize what other meanings his words might carry. He’s glad. Ebony-handled shaving brushes and cedar-wood wardrobes may be nice, but truly, Jean would sleep on the floor at Armand’s feet, if it meant he got to be near Armand.

“There is a connecting door.” Armand points. There, behind the wardrobe, it sits. “You have access to me at any time, should you choose to use it.”

“Thank you,” Jean whispers. He wants to say more. He wants to tell Armand what this means to him. As with so many things in his life, he fails. But he can look, and reach out to Armand’s embrace, warm and tight and secure. He can try to communicate with his body how grateful he is for this new sanctuary Armand has given him.

Leaving the Musketeers behind has meant losing his old home. While Treville could have maintained a separate dwelling, he’s never seen the point, and so in vacating his old position he’s vacated his dwelling, too. Louis has offered him quarters in the Louvre. That’s where Treville’s meagre belongings are being taken. But while Louis can replace Treville’s office there’s no way the King can offer him a home. The palace will never be a sanctuary for Treville. Not the way the garrison had been.

Only one person on Earth can create that for Jean now. Jean had expected to need to ask. To need to explain. To need to work, to figure out how such a thing can be made possible, in between Rochefort’s ghost and the pressure of a society that wouldn’t recognize their relationship.

To find that the thing has been done already – that the need has been anticipated, the problems resolved, and the sanctuary prepared and waiting – sends Treville giddy.

“Armand,” he breathes at last, fumbling after words that won’t come. In the end Jean leaves the name hanging in the air like a prayer and finds another way to use his lips to express his gratitude.

Armand accepts Jean’s kiss eagerly. For a short time it feels as if they’re both drowning in each other, and Jean can’t tell who is more desperate, who seeks more to ground and be grounded. Armand kisses as a man dying of thirst touches his lips to the cup of water. Jean drinks him in return. For months he’s been dreaming of this. Held the memories of tenderness and love in front of his soul like a shield. Rochefort’s knives have dented and bruised it but never penetrated. Jean has doubted everything there is to doubt about himself, but he’s never doubted Armand.

The moment is only broken when Jean’s bag slides off his shoulder and lands on the floor with a soft thud. Jean laughs, still giddy, and kicks it to one side. He doesn’t need it. There’s nothing in it that Armand hasn’t thought of and had placed ready in these chambers. Jean would far rather use the things Armand has bought him. Had Armand understood how much Jean wants to simply sink into Armand’s love, and provided these items as a physical way to do just that? Or had Armand been consulting his own desires? He’d always loved to see Jean marked as his. That Jean loves being so marked is one of the great God-given joys their relationship has brought them.

The urge to be marked again rises, as overwhelming as the memories had been in the entryway. Here there are no memories. Here there is only Jean and Armand. Here many things are possible.

“Do you have my collar?” Jean asks.

Armand nods. He reaches into his robes, and produces it from some inner pocket. He’s kept it close, then. Yes. The leather is well-cared-for, but not in the pristine way that indicates disuse. Armand must have been handling it, rubbing his fingers over it, to keep the leather looking so well-loved.

Jean reaches for it. He needs to feel it under his fingers, too. Feel it against his skin.

“Please,” he begs. He should be more specific. He should ask for what he wants. He’s said _please_ so many times, these last months, and gotten the opposite of what he’s wanted. How will Armand know to do any better, if Jean doesn’t ask?

Armand has a solution to his dilemma. He says, “You wish to wear it?”

Jean nods, still holding out his hands in supplication.

“Of course, beloved.” Armand approaches. Jean bows his head out of sheer instinct. Armand slides the leather around his neck, warm and supple. The clasp takes only a moment.

When it closes, something opens in Jean, some floodgate that he’d constructed to dam up his weaknesses. Brick by brick Jean had built it, and on each brick is inscribed the event, the action or the word that had caused it to come into being. Each brick is a testament to Rochefort’s cruelty. But the whole structure crumbles the moment Armand’s collar is back around Jean’s neck where it belongs.

The rubble remains. It chokes the stream, clogging it and strewing it with dirt and pebbles. But the water is flowing again. If there’s one thing Jean remembers from his youth in rural Gascony, it’s that flowing water eventually destroys all obstacles.

Jean’s eyes are stinging. He doesn’t want to cry. He kisses Armand instead, gratefully.

Armand kisses him back. But when Jean tries to deepen the kiss, Armand pulls back.

Jean chases him, dismay lapping at the edges of his soul as Armand brings up his hand and lays a finger across Jean’s lips. Jean is here, now, safe under Armand’s protection and care, in a well-appointed bedchamber Armand has had prepared for him. Surely Armand means to take advantage of it. Surely Armand isn’t – he had said _mine, not his._ Had said _you do not cast away your sword because it becomes soiled._ Surely he will not cast Jean away, because Rochefort has soiled him.

 _You merely clean your sword,_ Armand had said. Jean is here, waiting for Armand’s touch, waiting to be cleansed.

Armand is watching him. Under that gaze Jean is open as a flower towards the sun. He has no secrets from Armand; Armand can see everything, down to the depths of his soul.

“On the bed, beloved,” Armand says at last. He sounds almost dismayed. Jean can’t understand it. But Jean hears the command and hastens to obey, scrambling up onto the luxurious bed.

His boots catch on the edge, and Jean halts, confused. Armand hadn’t ordered him to strip. Shouldn’t he strip first? Or does Armand wish to undress Jean himself? He had used to, before. Rochefort had never bothered. For a moment Jean’s caught between the old and the new, and the more practical considerations, too, that say that his boots will soil the coverlets. Jean doesn’t want to soil anything else; surely he’s done enough.

“There are other linens,” Armand says. He’s climbing onto the bed. His boots are still on, too, and his clothing. Jean must be all right as he is, then. He relaxes.

Armand adds, “The maids made up the bed once; they can make it up again. Or else what do I pay them for?” He’s smiling, so it must be a joke, but somehow it doesn’t reach his eyes.

Jean smiles back, though. He reaches for the fastenings to Armand’s doublet. Eagerness is thrumming through him, the sense of being so close at last to something so longed for. It’s almost enough to drown out the dread. The memories. The fear.

Armand catches Jean’s arms mid-reach. It startles Jean. He’d been too deeply absorbed in his own emotions to see Armand reaching for him. Now Armand is holding him, stilling him, preventing him from resuming his task. What has Jean done wrong? Will he be punished? Fear rises again, drowning out the eagerness, choking him with its weeds.

“Stay there for a moment,” Armand instructs. Jean obeys. He stays as still as he knows how, hoping it’s enough, pretending that his heart isn’t racing and his breathing coming fast.

Armand arranges himself against the headboard, sitting up, with pillows around him. Then he holds out his hands to Jean. “Come here,” he invites.

Jean shuffles the few feet between them on his knees. Rochefort had liked that, when Jean knelt. Armand had liked that too. Jean dimly remembers that there had been some alteration, some crucial difference between the reason Armand had liked it and the reason Rochefort had, but the exact nature of it escapes him. Will it be enough that Jean remembers to kneel? Will Armand demand the reason of it from him? What will happen when Jean can’t give it?

Armand reaches for Jean when Jean gets close enough. Jean stills again, making himself an empty vessel for Armand to manipulate. He remains still as Armand tugs him closer. When Jean doesn’t move on his own, something pinches further in Armand’s expression. But Armand doesn’t speak. He merely coaxes Jean closer, until Jean is half-sprawled across pillows, shoulders and head in Armand’s lap.

It’s confusing. What can Armand want with Jean in this position? To suck his cock would be the obvious approach, but Armand has arranged Jean with his face upward, and prevents Jean from turning over when Jean tries. The pillow Armand’s placed in his own lap prevents easy access to that part of Armand’s anatomy. It’s soft under Jean’s head, though. Jean rests his cheek against Armand’s belly – flat, but still soft, not muscled – and tries not to think.

Armand settles his hand on Jean’s throat gently. With his other, he cards Jean’s hair. Under his breath he hums something, soft and gentle. A lullaby.

Suddenly everything becomes easier. With every breath, Jean’s throat expands, and he can feel the steady reassuring warmth of Armand’s hand, Armand’s collar. Armand’s own respiration can be felt against Jean’s cheek. The lullaby is vaguely reminiscent of Jean’s childhood, when his mother had still been alive, before the harsh adolescent years dominated by her slow death and Jean’s father’s slow descent into anger.

The hand stroking his hair invokes more recent memories. Soldier’s instincts waking Jean in the middle of the night, responding to the feeling – the knowledge – of being watched. But the watcher would only be Armand. Armand who sleeps lightly, who stays up late and rises early, and often spends his sleepless minutes watching Jean’s repose. When Jean had roused, Armand would card Jean’s hair just like this. Sometimes Armand would kiss Jean. Sometimes Jean would wake fully, and roll over, inviting more of Armand’s touch.

Sometimes Armand would only whisper: _sleep, Jean, I have more work to do_. Jean would nestle back down into the soft pillows of Armand’s bed, and doze off, smiling, safe and secure and unafraid.

Jean opens his eyes. The sun is slanting low through the windows. Midafternoon? It can’t be. He’d left the garrison early in the morning. They haven’t eaten their midday yet; how can the sun be so low?

“You fell asleep,” Armand says softly. Jean looks up. Armand is just as he’d been before Jean had blinked, leaning back against the headboard and watching Jean with a soft expression on his face.

“I couldn’t have,” Jean says blankly. He’d only closed his eyes for a moment.

Armand smiles a little, fondly, though there’s something else underneath, something that bodes ill for Rochefort. “When was the last time you had a full night’s sleep?”

Jean tries to remember. He can’t. After a moment he gives up and shrugs a little, helpless.

“It sounds to me like you needed that.” Armand leans down and kisses Jean, swiftly. “Are you hungry?”

“No.”

“You missed midday.” Armand points with his chin. A tray is sitting on the table next to Armand. One plate bears only crumbs. The other has a light assortment, breads and cheeses and sliced fruits.

Jean looks at the food. Thinks of it sitting in his stomach. “When are we going to see Rochefort?” he asks abruptly.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

“I want to go now.”

Armand looks surprised. “Now? But – ”

“I don’t want to eat anything.” Jean tries to straighten. Armand has to help him sit up; he’s slept oddly. But well. Jean hasn’t slept _well_ in months. He’d forgotten what it was like.

Will food taste better now, too? Will the air be sweeter in his lungs? He’ll have to learn those things later. There’s something he wants more than food or air now. More even than to bare himself to Armand’s sight and feel Armand’s touch on his naked skin. Jean slides out of the bed and tugs Armand along with him.

“You need your strength,” Armand says.

Jean shakes his head. His defiance surprises him; hadn’t he promised himself to obey Armand completely, in gratitude for his return and protection, in thanksgiving for his safety? But there is one point on which he is immovable, as he’s already told Armand, and this is it.

“I want to go see Rochefort,” Jean says. “I want to watch you destroy him.”

Armand looks at Jean. “Oh, Jean,” he says bleakly.

“Please,” Jean says. He isn’t begging, not yet. But he will if Armand wants.

Armand doesn’t want. “All right,” he says instead. “All right.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder that it's getting explicit, starting now. Tags have been added for amputation (tongue) and flaying.

The torture chambers are in another building, one of many that make up the Palais-Cardinal’s complex. Treville is only dimly surprised to find that they’re actually in a basement room. It’s cliché, but it also makes sense. There’s no better sound muffling than the weight of the Earth itself.

Treville descends with Richelieu, trying not to think about how many others have been held here. Hurt here. Not many, he thinks. Richelieu keeps most of his prisoners at the Bastille or other equally public prisons. These chambers are only for those for whom concealment is paramount. For those who have disappeared. Rochefort, too, has disappeared. To the rest of the world he’d been killed in the fighting during Richelieu’s return, when Rochefort’s disastrous plan to poison the King and marry the Queen had gone badly awry. D’Artagnan had wounded the Comte badly in defending the Queen. As far as d’Artagnan knows – as far as anyone else knows – the blow had been fatal.

Only a few know better. The King. The Queen. Richelieu. Treville. Jussac, Captain of the Red Guards and one of Treville’s few allies during the Rochefort months. Milady, of course, from whom – as with Jussac – Richelieu has few secrets. Athos knows as the new Captain of the Musketeers. He’d been the one to say d’Artagnan should not be told, in fact. Treville had thought the young man should know that his sword is still innocent of a man’s life. Athos had disagreed. Treville had left the decision in Athos’ hands. Outside of that small circle, and the few trusted attendants here at the Palais, Rochefort is dead.

They descend through a level with four small cells, all currently empty. “Rochefort?” Treville asks.

“Already waiting for us,” Richelieu replies. “I took the opportunity of your needing to pack to dispense with some necessary prerequisites.”

“Oh,” Treville says. He has no idea what that means. He doesn’t ask. He’s curious, but the emotion feels distant. Unimportant.

He touches his throat. It’s bare. Armand had removed the collar before they’d left Jean’s chambers. Jean wishes he could keep it with him. Armand’s cross, still around his neck, must suffice until they can return to privacy.

Instead Treville draws nearer to Richelieu as they walk. Richelieu radiates warmth and competence. Treville can relax into that. Treville doesn’t need to be the one in charge, the one making the decisions, the one with full knowledge and awareness. He can trust Richelieu to have handled everything. Including any prerequisites he may think necessary.

The level below the cells is only a short corridor leading to a single door. Guards wait in the corridor. Jussac is one of them. He nods to Treville as well as Richelieu and addresses them both when he says: “Everything is ready.”

“Thank you,” Richelieu says.

“Yes, thank you,” Treville echoes.

Jussac smiles, though it’s tight and strained. Richelieu gives Jussac a look that Treville can’t interpret. Jussac’s smile twists: resigned now.

Treville doesn’t understand this, either. Jussac is Richelieu’s right hand. He’d been entrusted with the Paris operation entirely during Richelieu’s supposed death. What’s happened to make Richelieu disappointed in Jussac, and for Jussac to believe he deserves it?

That train of thought gets cut off as Richelieu pushes the door open. A wave of oppression thicker than air seems to rush out of it, curling around Jean’s throat and wrists. It’s as if his soul can feel the weight of Rochefort’s presence behind that door. Jean shivers, entirely uncontrolled.

Richelieu’s arms around him startle him, and he flinches, before the familiar cologne reaches his nose and makes him realize he’s trembling, eyes closed. Jean pries his eyes back open and makes himself look. Armand’s features are distinctive. Even in his nightmares, Jean will never mistake Armand for Rochefort.

“You don’t have to do this,” Armand says.

“I want to,” Jean insists. He does. He absolutely does. He’s simply, simultaneously, terrified.

Jean’s done a lot of things despite being terrified. He’d left home, after his father had done his best to destroy Jean. He’d joined the army and walked into battlefields. He’d entered Louis’ court, despite his own fundamental belief in his worthlessness. Jean had opened himself to let Armand in. He’d allowed himself to believe the truths Armand had taught him.

If Jean could do those things, despite being terrified, he can do this, too.

“I need to,” Jean adds, and meetings Armand’s eyes.

Armand looks stubborn. But after a moment the intent melts away. He nods, though it leaves a weariness in his place that Jean doesn’t like. Armand isn’t weary. Armand is patient and tireless. And Richelieu is made of iron.

“Come on then,” Armand says.

It’s Richelieu who throws back his shoulders and enters the room; Richelieu with his cold control and immovable center and capacity for cruelty. It banishes the weariness and the stubbornness of Armand, hiding it out of sight where Rochefort will never glimpse it, never learn to suspect there is something in Richelieu to hurt.

Jean is enough of a weakness for any man, even for the Cardinal.

The room is square and not very large. Its walls and ceiling are stone, its floor packed dirt. Wall sconces hold enough torches to illuminate it brightly. Only half of them are lit. The result is a strange flickering half-light that immediately gives the entire proceedings the unreality of a dream.

Rochefort is restrained against the wall. Shackles are at his ankles, his wrists, his waist and his throat. A band passes over his forehead. His hands have been mittened, denying him the ability to use his fingers. There are four guards outside the room, including Jussac. Richelieu is at Treville’s side. These defenses are more than adequate. Therefore, Treville is not afraid.

Jean is afraid.

Richelieu steps forward, beckoning Treville in. The door is closed behind them. Its sound is ominous. Treville wants to keep his gaze focused on Richelieu – _safe, home_ – but it’s drawn, inexorably, to Rochefort.

Rochefort is smirking. He’s only beheld them for a moment, but the glint in his eyes and the expression on his face says that he’s already read Jean’s soul. He knows Jean is afraid. He knows what Jean is hoping for. He doubtless intends that Jean not get it.

Treville straightens his spine and glares back.

Rochefort laughs a little, though it’s broken and dry-sounding. He snarls – but wordlessly. That’s unusual. So is Rochefort’s not being gagged. The Comte had used his gift for words to such devastating effect, it’s hard for Treville to understand why Richelieu has left his mouth available. Richelieu doesn’t seem to notice the anomaly, busying himself with a piece of leather, which reveals itself as a smock. The Cardinal arranges it over his robes fastidiously.

That leaves Treville to ask. After a moment he does. “Why can’t Rochefort speak?”

“His tongue has been removed.”

Jean stares. “Removed? But – doesn’t he need – ”

Armand shakes his head. “He has had the opportunity to confess. He’s received last rites. I already know everything I need to know about his operation and his former plans – ”

“ _How_?”

“I hadn’t waited until my return to Paris to begin digging into Rochefort’s doings.”

“But –”

Armand regards Jean steadily. “There is no further purpose to Rochefort’s speech except to sow discord. He would have attempted to pick up where he had left off with tormenting you. That I will not permit.”

“Oh...” Jean feels something in himself shrink slightly. He’s been justifying his desire for Rochefort’s blood with the excuse of needing to understand his plans. Not just his confessed betrayal of France for Spain. The more secret schemes, too. The ones that had left Richelieu poisoned and near death, then alive, but in exile, scrambling to reassemble his covert empire while his enemy had sat pretty in his old palace and laid waste to all of his creations.

Now there’s no such excuse. Now Jean must come into this room, and remain here, in all honesty. Admitting to himself, to Richelieu, and even to Rochefort, that his purpose is not patriotic. It is not noble. It is not even practical. It is personal, and it is petty, and it is counter to everything Treville has ever held dear.

Rochefort’s tongue has been removed. His voice, on which he had depended so much, has been stolen. Rochefort will never speak again. And this is only the beginning; so minor an act, in Richelieu’s view, that he hadn’t even considered it truly torture. Only a prerequisite. An inconvenience to be gotten out of the way before the main event. The event for which Jean has demanded, and received, a front-row seat.

Armand draws Jean’s attention with a touch to the elbow. “For what he’s done there can be no mercy,” Armand says. “Rochefort knows this. He has nothing to either beg or hope. Only death remains. And if I had left him his tongue, he would only have used it to cause as much pain as possible before the end.”

Jean looks at the bound man. Rochefort looks back, eyes glittering with hate and madness. He does not even attempt to deny what Armand is saying.

Jean nods, slowly.

Armand gestures to a corner of the room. “There is a seat for you, if you wish it.”

Jean follows Armand’s gesture. Yes, a chair has been brought in, positioned carefully to be out of any splatter but maintain an unobstructed view of the proceedings. The chair is finely made and richly upholstered. It doesn’t belong here. Jean shakes his head.

“I’d rather stand,” he says. It’s he who’s requested these proceedings; Richelieu admits to having all the knowledge he needs. Perhaps Richelieu would torture Rochefort anyway, for his own personal satisfaction, for revenge. Perhaps he wouldn’t. Regardless, Jean’s wishes are driving today’s actions, and it’s Jean who must bear witness.

Armand nods, accepting this. “At least stand _by_ the chair?” he asks. “Just in case.”

It’s a reasonable request. Jean obeys.

Armand waits until Jean is in place. Then he turns his attention back to Rochefort.

Along the far wall of the room, a long bench runs, with many items laid out upon it. Jean recognizes surprisingly few of these items. He’s a soldier; he’s seen instruments of torture before. Experienced no small few of them. Some in the line of duty and some at Rochefort’s hands. He sees none that he recognizes on that bench.

Armand goes over to that wall, but picks up none of the instruments. Instead he picks up a small table and brings it to the chained man, placing it in front of Rochefort.

“What are you doing?” Jean can’t help but ask.

Armand looks up. “Would you like me to narrate?”

“Please.”

“Here we have an unusual prisoner.” Richelieu returns to the table and picks up a length of twine. “He’s been tortured before, most recently by the Spanish for a period of as much as five years, though I suspect somewhat less. The Spanish are very good at their art. I, too, am good at this, but I do not pretend to notably surpass the Spanish.”

Rochefort grunts something derogatory-sounding.

“For a prisoner such as this, the usual torments are superfluous,” Richelieu goes on. He studies the tableau, then inches the table closer to Rochefort, until it’s pressing up against Rochefort’s thighs. Now Jean notices its height. Flush against Rochefort, it’s exactly the right height for Rochefort’s cock and balls to sprawl atop the small table, limp like a fish tossed dead onto the docks.

Armand reaches down and lifts the cock slightly. Just enough to slip a length of twine underneath it. He begins to wind the twine around the base of Rochefort’s cock.

“Tight, but not too tight,” Richelieu says. “This will serve three purposes. First, it will limit blood loss. I have no desire to speed Rochefort’s departure from this world. Secondly, it heightens sensation for the sufferer. And thirdly, it will make the organ easier to manipulate, since the trapped blood will counterfeit the effects of arousal.”

Indeed, Rochefort’s cock is slowly rising. Richelieu is patient, tying off his knots and letting it come to full erection. Jean shivers. The sight is unpleasant. And he wishes he could be sure that no part of this gives Rochefort pleasure. The man is sick and sadistic enough for anything.

“Don’t worry,” Armand says, reading Jean’s mind. “Any enjoyment will be short-lived.”

Rochefort’s cock is mostly hard now and doesn’t seem to be getting harder. Richelieu nods and picks up a small knife.

“That’s his,” Jean says, startled.

“Yes.” Richelieu studies it. “A gift from the Infanta, I think he told you.”

Jean doesn’t answer. He’s too busy beating back the memories.

“Very sharp and fine. Excellent for these purposes. And the psychological value is not to be underestimated.”

Armand turns his attention back to Rochefort’s cock. He makes three shallow cuts, two long and parallel to each other, the third short and joining two ends. Blood wells up, but not much. Not enough to prevent Armand from seeing what he’s doing as he slides the tip of the knife under the third cut and begins, slowly, to peel the strip of skin from Rochefort’s body.

The Comte goes pale, a physical reaction he can’t avoid. His breath begins to come faster and sweat gleams at his temples. He doesn’t cry out. Not now.

Armand takes his time. The skin rips free of Rochefort’s cock slowly but inexorably. The flesh fights Richelieu at every step, struggling to stay attached. It goes red first, as it’s stretched, then yellow pale, then nearly full white. Then it’s red again, as it tears free with a sickening sound and blood rushes up to blot out Jean’s sight of the exact place of separation. By the time the first strip is off, Rochefort’s breath is audible as it hits his teeth.

Jean is riveted. This must be painful, surely, but can it really be more painful than being branded with hot iron or flogged or sprinkled with hot lead? Had Rochefort reacted like this when the Spanish had done those things to him? Had he screamed for them? Will he scream for Armand, before he dies?

“The choice of the penis as a starting place is a psychological gambit all its own,” Richelieu goes on, voice as calm as if he’s explaining matters of state to the King, not taking up the Infanta’s knife and making another two cuts. He begins to peel back a second strip. Rochefort’s making soft noises now. Grunts.

Rochefort doesn’t look powerful anymore. He doesn’t look fearsome. But he still glares his hatred. He still looks dangerous.

“Of course, there is the obvious reason that he used it to hurt you. But it goes further like that. Rochefort is obsessed with exceptionalism. He believes – not in so many words, but this is its essence – that he is superior in some way to those around him. That his superiority entitles him to things that most people must live without. And, notably, that it gives him the right to damage others.”

Richelieu cuts the second strip neatly from Rochefort’s body, instead of tearing it away, as he had the first. “We must be careful of blood loss,” he explains as an aside. He picks up a small vial that had been sitting, unnoticed, on the bench next to him. “This will help. Many men scream at this point, but not, I think, Monsieur Rochefort.”

Jean watches with a sick fascination as Rochefort visibly braces himself. The Comte knows what’s in that vial even if Jean doesn’t. Armand takes his time lifting it, tipping it gently, until its contents pour out and splatter over Rochefort’s cock, directly onto the gaping wound where Richelieu has peeled away two strips of Rochefort’s skin.

Richelieu’s right. Rochefort doesn’t scream. But for the first time it looks like he wants to.

“Poppyseed oil,” Richelieu explains. “An effective embolic agent. Quite painful when applied to exposed skin, as you see.”

“I do see,” Jean manages. The sight is mesmerizing: Rochefort’s teeth gritted, his hands curled in on themselves, veins beginning to stand out in his temples as he strains himself against the pain.

“It will take a moment to work.”

Richelieu sets the empty vial aside and moves to join Jean. A guiding touch to Jean’s arm, and Jean is turned away from Rochefort, further shielded by Armand’s body from the madman.

“Are you well?” Armand asks in a low voice, searching Jean’s face for signs of distress. “You wish to continue?”

The sound of flesh tearing seems lodged in Jean’s ears, and he has to swallow to try and get it out. But the noises he wants to hear are the ones Rochefort hasn’t made yet. A few grunts, a few hissing breaths, are all that Rochefort’s made. Jean wants to hear more. Wants to hear Rochefort sound pained. Agonized. Eager for it to stop.

Desperate, as Jean had been. Jean needs to hear that. He doesn’t believe Rochefort will ever scream, but he doesn’t need it, either. What he needs is to hear Rochefort desperate.

“I need to continue,” he says, willing Armand to understand.

“Whatever you wish, beloved,” Armand promises.

Rochefort’s breathing has gained a raspy note, but slowed, noticeably. Richelieu turns back around and returns to his previous position, picking up the knife.

Jean takes a shaky step backward and sits down in the chair provided.

* * *

Over the course of the next two hours, Richelieu removes all of the flesh from Rochefort’s penis, stopping frequently to apply poppyseed oil and slow the bleeding. By the end of it, the organ Rochefort had been so proud of, had used to such devastating effect, is reduced to a slab of meat. Still laid out on the small table, it looks nothing like a penis anymore. It looks like a worm, curled up and bleeding.

Rochefort himself is sagging in his chains. He’s well past pale; there’s a greyish tinge to his skin, and his breathing is agonized. Despite that, he’s made no noise worse than a single soft whimper, when Richelieu had with expert finesse sliced off the circle of skin at the head of Rochefort’s cock.

Even that whimper had been medicine to Jean’s soul. The grunts had been animalistic, a simple physical reaction to pain, unavoidable and unavoided. But the whimper is human. The whimper is real. The whimper is something Jean can treasure. Can remember, and think, _that was real pain._

“We will pause here,” Richelieu announces.

“No,” Jean protests, dismayed. They’ve just started making progress –

Armand turns to him. “He’s lost too much blood to safely continue. I won’t let him die so soon.”

Jean closes his lips rebelliously over the words that want to escape. Intellectually he sees the truth of Armand’s words, but the wounded parts of him aren’t satisfied with a single whimper. They want more. They want it all.

“You shall have it all,” Armand promises. “In time.”

Unwillingly Jean nods.

Richelieu cleans the knife fastidiously and lays it aside. Then Armand comes forward and takes Jean’s arm.

“He will be fed now,” he explains, steering Jean out of the room, still gentle. “Red meats, wine, all things that will strengthen the blood. We will dine too. Then we’ll resume our work.”

Still silent, Jean lets himself be steered. They retrace their steps up the flights of stairs and emerge into the evening. The sun is lighting up the sky with brilliant reds and oranges. Jean blinks into its light and sees blood and pus running from open wounds.

“Come,” Armand says, urging Jean along back to the main building.

The door closing behind them startles Jean enough that he blinks the memories from his eyes and starts to take in his surroundings again. The air is warmer here, no longer the cold of the underground chamber or the cool of a Paris evening in autumn. In the bedrooms fires will be being lit.

They’re not going to the bedrooms. _Dinner_ , Armand had said. Yes, that makes sense. They’re going down to the small dining hall.

They reach the door. Armand leaves Jean there for a moment to strip off his ruined gloves and wash his hands and arms. When he returns, he finds Jean still standing in the doorway, lost.

Two places have been set at the table. Two. One for Armand, and one for Jean.

 _One of those places is for me,_ Jean tells himself. He makes himself look at it. The head of the table is Armand’s, of course. And the place at his right is for Jean. It always had been, before. And it is again now. It _is_. Jean tries desperately to convince himself of this.

“Jean, what’s wrong?”

The touch of Armand’s hand to Jean’s elbow is too much. Jean feels the traitorous tears well up. He chokes on his attempt to explain.

Warm arms envelop him. Jean clutches at the familiar robes and buries his face in them, gasping for breath. The rasp in his throat sounds like the rattle in Rochefort’s. Even at Armand’s side, in Armand’s embrace, Jean is still trapped in a torture chamber of his own.

“Would you prefer to eat in my chambers?” Armand offers. “Or yours?”

That sets off another wave of trembling. _Yours._ Jean thinks of the chambers Armand has given him and despairs. How can Armand think Jean is worthy of that? Of the promise they stand for and the love they represent? Jean had never been very much, but Armand had made him into a beautiful thing, a statue carved to his glory. And then Rochefort had come along and defaced him. Sullied him. Broken him. Jean is nothing but rubble now, and yet Armand looks at him as if he’s marble inlaid with gems. As if he’d been sculpted by one of the old masters Armand loves so, worthy to stand in the lavishly appointed chambers built for the wife Armand cannot take, for the mistresses everyone expects him to have.

“No,” Jean manages to say. No, that would be worse. To eat in the chambers that aren’t worthy for him, or the chambers that had used to mean safety, used to mean comfort and home, but now breathe fear.

Armand isn’t weak like Jean. Armand had moved straight back into his old rooms. Driven out everything that had been Rochefort’s, at least in his own mind, and reclaimed everything that had been his.

But to eat in this room is little better. Jean looks up and admits, “I don’t think I can sit at the table.”

For a moment Armand’s grip tightens on Jean’s arms. Something terrifying flashes through his eyes. Then contrition and dismay replaces it, and Armand loosens his grip. Opens his mouth as if to apologize.

“Can I sit next to you?” Jean blurts out before Armand can. “On the floor, but next to you? Please?”

Armand closes his mouth again. Nods tightly.

Jean manages a shaky smile. After a moment Armand returns it.

“Wait,” Armand says, when Jean moves to kneel next to Armand. “Just – let me – ”

Bemused, Jean waits. Armand leaves the room briefly, then returns, carrying pillows from a nearby chaise. He puts them on the floor by his chair, then turns seriously to Jean.

“You are to arrange those in any way you need to be comfortable,” he orders. “If you are ever uncomfortable, even briefly, even only a little, you will tell me at once.”

Jean relaxes. “Of course,” he says.

He wants to tell Armand how much he appreciates having that made an order. He can’t quite get it out. But Armand must understand, or else he wouldn’t have done it in the first place.

“Good,” Armand says. For the first time since Jean’s known him, Armand sounds faintly lost.

Jean kneels on the pillows and looks back up. “Please sit?” he asks.

Armand makes a soft sound in the back of his throat, frustrated. But he does. Jean shuffles forward slightly and lays his head against Armand’s thigh. Armand lets his hand drop and settle on Jean’s hair, sliding back to the nape of Jean’s neck. Jean shivers, but only some of it is in remembered fear. Armand’s hands are in no way mistakable for Rochefort’s. Even if their shape and weight had been identical – and they aren’t – the gentleness in Armand’s touch is obvious at every moment.

“How will you eat?” Armand asks, frustration still in his voice.

Jean pauses. “I – I hadn’t – ”

The confusion of it nearly chokes him. Rochefort had never expected Treville to eat. But of course Armand does. Armand always has. When Jean is here, Armand’s cook brings out rich foods, the kind Jean loves, though Armand prefers simpler fare, breads and cheeses and fruits. When Jean’s here Armand treasures him. But Jean’s not sitting at Armand’s right hand; Treville is kneeling at Rochefort’s feet, waiting for the moment when –

“Jean!”

Armand is on the floor next to him now. His gentle hands cup Jean’s cheeks. Long fingers stroke away yet more tears. Jean has wept an ocean by now; surely he will run dry eventually, and stop shaming himself thereby?

“Stop,” Armand says fiercely. “Whatever’s going through your head, please, _please_ stop.”

Jean tries. He does. When Jean stands at the Gates, he will be able to tell his Creator that he’d tried, though as to any success he will not presume to testify.

The door banging open is what does it. Instantly Jean stiffens, old fear drying his eyes, the instinctive imperative not to show weakness in front of a predator.

Paradoxically, the reflex comforts Jean. It makes him realize that, in spite of it all, in spite of the fear he can’t control, he doesn’t fear Armand. Armand is still his harbor, his protector, his guardian. In front of Armand Jean may be weak.

The serving-maid enters. Jean breathes easier. _Of course it couldn’t be Rochefort_ , he reminds himself. Rochefort is still chained up in the dungeons, guarded by four of Richelieu’s most trusted men, being force-fed nourishing foods so Richelieu can make his torment last.

“My… my lord?” the serving-maid falters. She looks from the tray in her hands to the two men on the floor in confusion and dismay. Treville feels a stab of empathy for her. Neither of them know how to behave in this situation. All the usual rules have been suspended. Nothing makes sense anymore.

“We will be dining on the floor,” Richelieu says, his placid tone daring her to comment. “As the Moors do. Go back to Cook and tell her to prepare two plates of food that can be eaten without cutlery. As fortifying as she knows how. And ale instead of wine.”

“Y – yes, m’lord, right away,” the girl stutters.

“And Sally – if it takes fewer than twenty minutes to accomplish this – wait in the kitchen with the trays, and don’t come back before that time has elapsed.”

Sally nods quickly. She retreats from the room as quickly as she can, taking the tray with her, and closes the door. Armand returns his attention to Jean.

“Can you tell me?” he asks softly. “What Rochefort did to you here? Here, particularly, in this room?”

“If you take this approach we will be half a year going over all the places where he liked to play,” Jean mutters, trying to withdraw.

Armand doesn’t let Jean go. “Then we shall be half a year at it,” he says firmly. “Jean, I’m not giving up.”

Jean has nothing to say to that. Probably Armand _should_ give up. But Jean has never understood what had made Armand choose Jean in the first place, or pour into Jean all of the effort Armand had given when their relationship had begun. Jean certainly can’t begin to fathom why Armand seems to wish to do it all again.

The nobler course would no doubt be for Jean to leave of his own volition. Even as Jean thinks it, though, he rejects it. Jean isn’t capable of turning from Armand. Everything of Jean that’s good is Armand’s doing. Leaving would be suicide. He’s too much of a Catholic for that. And whatever Jean might be willing to accept for himself, he absolutely refuses to put that on Armand’s soul.

So Jean will be selfish. He’ll stay, and he’ll take from Armand as much as Armand is willing to give, and pray that a better tomorrow is waiting for them both – if not in this world, then in the one to come.

* * *

It takes more than twenty minutes for Jean to tell Armand everything Rochefort had done to him in this room. Armand shushes Jean gently when he hears Sally approaching and goes to the door to collect the food, sending Sally away without entering. He brings the plates back and feeds Jean himself, morsel by morsel, sip by sip. Cook has sent squares of hot steak and balls of mashed potatoes rich in cream, broccoli in florets and a heavy red wine sauce soaking into the whole. There are slices of heavy yellow cheese and thick, dark bread studded with nuts and fruits. Cold cuts of fish and a white soup that’s been thickened with butter. The ale has been spiced, the fruits and nuts candied. Jean doesn’t taste any of it, but Armand coaxes him into eating something like a full meal for the first time in longer than Jean cares to remember.

When at last his voice runs dry, Armand just holds him for a while longer, in silence, stroking Jean’s hair gently.

“I know that was difficult,” Armand says softly. “Thank you for telling me, beloved.”

Jean astonishes himself by managing a tired smile. “I’m so glad you’re home,” he murmurs.

“As am I.” Armand kisses him, a chaste, lingering press of lips. It’s left to Jean to deepen it. To chase the love and tenderness that he craves like air or water or absolution.

Armand senses Jean’s needs effortlessly, as he always does. He lays Jean back on the scattered pillows and kisses Jean the way he kisses his crucifix, as if Jean is holy and pure and worthy of worship. The sacrilege of it makes Jean catch his breath.

But there’s something Jean has been needing to ask, and this is the best moment yet, when Jean is relatively calm, when the shadows in Armand’s eyes are temporarily in abeyance. “Armand?” he murmurs, as Armand trails his kisses lower, down Jean’s neck.

“Yes?”

“Would you take me?”

Armand stills. Panic begins to claw its way up Jean’s throat as the silence drags out.

“I haven’t earned that yet,” Armand says at last. He lifts his head from Jean’s neck, meeting Jean’s eyes. “I’ve been the cause of so much of your pain. I have to make that right first.”

Jean drags breath into protesting lungs. “I don’t understand.”

“I left you behind and that monster hurt you. He hurt you so badly you can’t even eat at the table. I haven’t asked you to set foot yet into my rooms; I’m afraid of what would happen if I tried. And it’s my fault.”

“No,” Jean says. “No!” Stronger the second time, as Armand’s face sets in familiar lines of determination. “I am the one who left myself exposed,” Jean tries to explain. “I chose to keep silent and submit, when Rochefort showed me he had proof of our relationship. I thought I could endure it. If I was wrong, if I was weak, it’s no fault of yours – ”

“You are not weak,” Armand cries.

“I have become so,” Jean whispers. “And if I am ever to become otherwise again, I need you.”

“I am ever at your side,” Armand swears.

“But not in my body.”

“Not until I’ve atoned.”

“How long do you expect me to go without you? Until I’ve told you everything he did to me? Until I no longer flinch at a heavy footfall? Until – ”

“Until you ask me.”

“I’m asking you now.”

“You don’t mean it now,” Armand says. “You think Rochefort sullied you somehow. You think you’re unclean and unworthy and so you ask to try to prove otherwise to yourself.”

“Hasn’t he?” Jean dashes tears away impatiently. “Aren’t I?”

“Never.” Armand kisses Jean again. “I’ll give you pleasure any way you wish it. Worship you a thousand ways. And when you ask me again, when you really mean it, I’ll give you pleasure that way, too.”

“But not now.”

“No. Not now. Certainly not while that demon still draws breath under my roof.”

Jean shivers involuntarily. He hadn’t thought of that. Hadn’t considered what it might mean to bare himself, make himself vulnerable, while Rochefort still lives. Now that he’s thought of it, he knows he couldn’t do it. Knows he’d be expecting any minute for Rochefort to come bursting in the door and hurt him again.

“That’s why.” Armand nods.

“But after he’s dead?” Jean persists.

Armand sighs. “After he’s dead, when you’re ready, you may ask,” he says.

“And now?” Jean asks. “What may I ask for now?”

“Whatever else you like.”

“I don’t know what I like.” Jean closes his eyes and laughs, though there’s little humor in the sound. “I don’t remember. Choose for me? Something nice. Something I used to like.”

Armand’s huff of breath is too little to be called a sigh; it barely ruffles Jean’s hair. “Lean back, then.”

Jean does, obediently. Reflexively he opens his eyes again, but keeps his hands still and flat at his sides, his body limp. Waiting.

“Move in any way you like,” Armand tells him. “Or not, if you don’t.”

“All right,” Jean whispers through dry lips.

Armand undresses him slowly, a present from a foreign dignitary. It’s harder than it should be. Rochefort had always ordered Treville to strip. Jean’s lost the trick of helping Armand remove his clothes, and it makes it awkward, when Jean’s limbs don’t cooperate. Once he’d been used to this. Once this had been easy. It’s not now, and Jean hates it.

Eventually he’s naked, though, exposed in the empty room. Armand seems to sense the discomfort this causes Jean. He shrugs off his own robe and lets Jean drape it loosely over himself, though surely this defeats the purpose.

Armand proves it doesn’t when he slides the robe open and trails kisses down the slender exposed sliver of Jean’s chest. He nibbles at Jean’s pectoral muscle but stays well away from pebbled nipples, and something in Jean’s chest loosens, some fear he hadn’t realized he's been carrying until Armand eases it. Jean gasps when Armand’s moustache tickles his stomach, and sighs, relieved, when Armand finally lowers his mouth to Jean’s cock.

Jean’s not hard. Once he would have been, hard and straining and leaking just from this alone. And it’s been so long since Jean’s felt physical pleasure. Rochefort had forced orgasms from him over the past year, but never pleasurably. He should be eager.

He opens his mouth to apologize, but has to break off and gasp when Armand takes advantage of Jean’s softness to take Jean entirely into his mouth. Jean’s hips buck up without conscious volition, and he realizes he’s moaning softly, fingers curled into Armand’s hair.

Jean yanks his hands back as if he’s been burned. Armand pulls off for a moment, reaches for them, and puts them back on his head.

“Any way you like,” he reminds Jean.

“I’m sorry,” Jean whispers.

Armand doesn’t dignify this with a response. He returns to Jean’s cock instead, sucking him back down. He’s gentle and patient, curling his tongue around the mouthful and stroking gently down Jean’s belly and thighs until Jean sighs, finally starting to relax.

It takes longer than Jean’s comfortable with for him to grow hard, but Armand never slows or stops, and eventually Jean thickens in Armand’s welcoming mouth. Armand hums encouragingly and slides one finger down past Jean’s balls. Jean stiffens again, instinctive and unstoppable, but Armand doesn’t attempt penetration. He strokes the sensitive skin under Jean’s balls instead, and Jean startles himself by moaning. The sound echoes around the room. Too loud. Jean doesn’t like it.

Armand does. He redoubles his efforts, and Jean finds himself moaning again, softer this time, but heartfelt. Jean feels his control slipping away inch by inch until his fingers are tight in Armand’s hair and he’s thrusting up, eager.

When Jean finally comes, it’s not in a single burst of pleasure, but rather in the slow, drawn-out spill of a river overflowing its banks. The feeling washes through him in waves, followed eventually by lassitude. At some point Jean had closed his eyes. At some point Armand had covered Jean again with the robe and laid himself down next to Jean, tugging Jean in close, so that Jean’s head is pillowed on Armand’s admittedly bony shoulder.

He’d used to tease Armand about those shoulders. Had used to insist on putting a thin pillow between his ear and the sharp jut of Armand’s collarbone. Jean can’t fathom doing that right now. He doesn’t want anything between himself and Armand’s skin, or the steady, reassuring beat of Armand’s heart.

“There you are,” Armand murmurs, when at last Jean opens his eyes.

“I’ve been here all along,” Jean says, confused.

Armand kisses him. “You’re right,” he says, “though I think you’d forgotten that.”

Jean doesn’t know what to say to that. Wisely, he says nothing.

Armand lets him get away with that. They lay there together for a few moments longer, before the discomfort of laying on a few throw pillows atop a marble floor becomes noticeable. Then Armand gets them both up, brushes Jean down, and helps Jean redress.

“Do you want to return to the torture chamber with me?” Armand asks. “Or would you prefer to retire? You could have a bath and an early night.”

Jean looks away for a moment. He’s thinking. Armand watches him think, as Rochefort had so often done, but Armand’s gaze is different. Armand isn’t looking for weakness to exploit. He’s looking for what will make Jean strong. And his look makes Jean think he can accomplish anything.

The pillows look incongruous, scattered on the floor, the empty trays of finger foods stacked neatly against the wall. The table is still as neatly laid and pristine as it had been when Jean and Armand had entered the room. Armand’s chair is slightly pushed back from the table. Other than that, the tableau is perfect: _two gentlemen about to dine._

Jean is going to be that second gentleman again, whatever it takes.

“I don’t want an early night,” Jean says with quiet determination. “I want to go back. And then I want to have dinner with you, and bathe, and retire together.”

“As you wish,” Armand promises, and rings the bell for Sally to take away the trays.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: the "amputation" tag becomes general in this chapter.

Rochefort’s color has improved when they return to the dungeon, but not much else. Jean doesn’t fool himself into thinking Rochefort’s broken so soon; Rochefort’s fire is banked, not doused, but even that is a victory. Rochefort has never been the sort of man who’s understood the value in a strategic withdrawal. He’s never held himself back willingly in his life. That he does so now, unwillingly, is proof that Richelieu is beginning to chip away at his veneer.

The intermission has given Rochefort a chance to regain some of the ground he’d lost, and he sneers very creditably at Richelieu and Treville as they reenter the room. If Treville hadn’t seen those sneers every day for months, and in situations where Rochefort had truly been enjoying himself, Treville might even have been fooled.

Treville seats himself in the provided chair without comment. Richelieu had been right to put it there. Of course he had. Jean wants to see Rochefort suffer, but that doesn’t mean Treville has changed. Treville is still the same man who prefers to fight his battles publically under the clear blue sky and the eyes of God. This dark underground chamber is not Treville’s native heath. The chair is necessary. Necessary to support him – and necessary to remind him, too, of who he is. Who he had been. Who he is going to become.

Richelieu is covering himself back up with his smock. Treville doesn’t want to meet Rochefort’s eyes, so instead he lets his gaze wander. It snags almost immediately upon a new addition to the room. A small brazier has been set up against one wall. Several irons have been set in it to heat, their long poles extending out to be safely held.

Burns? Treville doesn’t frown, but the urge makes itself known. Burns are painful, certainly, but… terrible as it may be to think, they’re not _that_ painful. People burn themselves all the time, accidentally. Cooks on stoves, washerwomen on irons, soldiers on cannons. Certainly such accidental burns are less severe than those inflicted with purpose. But Treville has been tortured with hot iron before; he still bears the scars. It hasn’t been the worst thing he’d lived through.

“The purpose of the irons are cauterization,” Richelieu says, following the direction of Treville’s gaze. “Any pain they cause will be incidental.”

“Cauterization?” Treville looks back at Richelieu, who redirects Treville’s attention with a wave of his arm. Looking back at Rochefort Treville sees that the small table of before has been moved slightly to one side. A seemingly mismatched array of items is sitting upon it. Twine, fine-braided, such as a fisherman might use in his lures. Several small sponges. The Infanta’s knives.

“The twine is to tie off certain sections slated for removal,” Richelieu explains. “We will begin with fingers. Small, so the blood loss is not serious, particularly when cauterized immediately after. Then, if Rochefort is not in danger of shock, we will proceed up the arm.”

 _Oh God_. Treville swallows hastily. Something burns in the back of his throat as he does. He presses his lips together, refusing to allow himself to heave.

The mental images aren’t so easily dismissed. Richelieu is talking about maiming Rochefort in cold blood, one slow, tortuous inch at a time. Treville’s seen enough war that he doesn’t have to imagine the life that follows the loss of a limb. It’s been a private nightmare of his for years. Not private to Armand, of course. Armand has soothed Jean through nightmares after battle too often to count. Armand doesn’t choose this torture by chance: it’s deliberately done, to visit one of Jean’s nightmares on another.

When Jean doesn’t reply immediately, Richelieu turns back to Rochefort. A taller table has taken the place of the small one, sitting in front of Rochefort. As Jean watches, Richelieu unshackles one of Rochefort’s hands from the wall.

Treville comes to his feet automatically, the threat shrieking through his veins. He knows before he sees Rochefort shift his weight that the Comte will use his newfound semi-freedom to attack. The opportunity is too good to pass up.

Richelieu is prepared. Even as Rochefort swings his still-mittened hand, hoping to connect and stun his opponent, Richelieu seizes it and slams it down on the table. Richelieu’s other hand moves almost too fast to see: he snatches up one of the Infanta’s knives, sitting on the smaller table nearby, and plunges it through Rochefort’s wrist. It pierces cleanly through Rochefort’s flesh and embeds itself into the table.

Rochefort’s eyes bulge. He does more than grunt: what’s left of his voice is audible as the impact rocks through him. Treville freezes, riveted at the sight and the sound. Together they stare at the knife. It’s buried to the hilt in Rochefort’s wrist, so deep the tip of the blade has pierced through the soft wood of the table entirely and protrudes a fraction of an inch through its underside.

Richelieu glances at Treville quickly, but doesn’t pause: he grabs the dangling shackle and reattaches it, to the table this time. Treville’s gaze tracks the table down and he sees, to his relief, that its legs have been attached to hooks in the floor. Rochefort won’t be able to simply use the table as an extension of his arm. Rochefort is again as well restrained as he had been moments before. And the Comte settles back into his defensive tension, so immediately that it’s as if the moment of opportunity and vulnerability has never been.

Treville doesn’t relax so easily. He’s left standing, half-balanced, ready to attack. Every nerve singing with the sense of imminent danger. The sound of Rochefort’s dismay, which should have been gratifying, is wiped out entirely by the fear engendered by Rochefort’s brief moment of semi-freedom.

“Jean,” Armand murmurs.

All of Jean’s muscles unlock at once. He all but collapses into the chair.

“It’s all right,” Richelieu says carefully. “He’s restrained again.”

“That was damn foolish,” Treville says, snappish with fear and relief. “You could have called in any of the guards to help – ”

“Their help was unnecessary.” Richelieu is unruffled. “This is a private event. They are here for emergencies, which this was not.”

“It could have been!”

“No, it could not.”

Treville shakes his head. Looks past Richelieu to Rochefort. “What’s to stop him from just tearing the knife through his skin and trying again the moment you’re back within range?” he challenges, keeping his voice down.

“The knife is caught between the bones of his arm on either side, and his wrist on the other. He could attempt to slice farther up his arm, but even if he could contort so far, he would be stopped by the elbow. The table prevents him from pressing down; the shackle from lifting up. The hilt is too wide to slide through the arm. And so he is trapped.”

Treville swallows hard. He studies the knife’s position again, ignoring the way Rochefort is glaring at them both, spittle flying from his lips. It does seem…

“I know what I’m doing,” Richelieu says, conciliatory.

That’s apparently the wrong thing to say. Jean has given up trying to understand where his emotions are coming from; he seems to swing from a dark emptiness to anguish to anger, faster than he can foresee, for reasons he can’t discern. Now he’s suddenly furious. Furious at Rochefort’s attempt to escape, at Richelieu for casually endangering them both, and at himself for – for – for sitting here, and letting it all happen, the flaying and the maiming and the –

 _I know what I’m doing,_ Richelieu had said. He’d obviously meant it to soothe. But all Treville hears is the threat.

“How?” he demands. When Richelieu seems not to understand, Treville clarifies: “How do you know?”

Richelieu raises an eyebrow. “It’s the same method by which the nails are placed during crucifixion,” he says mildly. “Rochefort is like Jesus in no other respect, but perhaps sharing stigmata with our Lord will help purify his soul for the world to come.”

“Oh,” Treville says, somewhat blankly. Now that he’s been given an answer, he realizes how much it isn’t the answer he’d been expecting. He’d been expecting a discourse on torture, on all the means of causing pain at Richelieu’s disposal, on the practical experience Richelieu brings to such matters. An answer steeped in religion upends his expectations.

Richelieu gives him a look that Treville can’t quite decipher. Sadness, resignation, even… dismay. He turns his back on Rochefort deliberately and comes over to Treville. Watching him, Treville shakes his head slightly, trying to dislodge the kernel of unease that has lodged itself in his throat.

“Jean,” Armand says quietly. Jean’s attention shifts abruptly. Even Rochefort’s gaze, boring into them from across the room, fades into the distance. All of Jean’s focus is on Armand as Armand says, still quiet, always gentle: “There are parts of me you’ve known about intellectually but never chose to view in depth. This is one of them. I am a torturer. Rochefort is not the first person to be chained in this chamber. Nor is he the tenth. He may possibly be the fiftieth. I have not kept track.”

Armand’s gaze pins him. Jean can’t look away, not when Armand commands his attention. No matter that he wants to.

“You are here because you wish to be, and only for as long as you wish to be,” Armand goes on. “This stops the moment you say it does.”

“When you say _this_ ,” Jean demands. “Do you just mean me? I may leave at any time?”

Armand shakes his head. “All of it. Say the word, and I’ll slit Rochefort’s throat.”

“But – ” Anger transmutes suddenly into dizziness. “But surely you have your own goals. Your own desires.”

“You are my only goal. Your desires are my only desires. France’s interests are satisfied. What remains is for you. You wished me to cause Rochefort pain – I am doing so. If you wish for it to stop, it will be over within moments.”

The breath leaves Jean in a rush. He can’t speak. The magnitude of it staggers him: his dizziness doubles, then redoubles, until nothing seems to be standing still.

“Do you wish for it to stop?” Armand prompts after a moment.

Jean finally looks away from him. It’s hard, but he needs to break that compassionate gaze, to remind himself that there’s a world outside Armand’s love and support.

If Jean could stay here – in the Palais-Cardinal, in the sanctuary Armand has provided him, in the safety of Armand’s castle – then it could stop. Armand has always been able to supply the missing pieces of Jean. There would be no need for Jean to supply them himself, if Jean were never to have to leave.

That’s why Jean looks away. Looks at Rochefort. And the world comes rushing back in: Louis’ court, the Musketeers, the war that’s about to be fought with Spain. Treville must be part of all of those. Treville must exist again, independent, as capable as possible.

And for that he still needs one thing more. He needs to defeat his enemies. Exorcise his demons.

He needs to hear Rochefort scream.

Armand nods. “As you wish,” he says, though Jean hasn’t spoken.

Richelieu returns to Rochefort’s side. He undoes the mitten on the hand chained to the table and pinned there with iron. When it is free, bare fresh shockingly vulnerable in the candlelight, Richelieu picks up the twine and begins to wind it tight at the base of each of Rochefort’s fingers.

Then – when all five are bound, when they’re plump like sausages from the pressure and beginning to turn purple from the constriction, when Rochefort is glaring in a fury that fails to entirely mask the first stirrings of trepidation, and Treville is trembling in fearful anticipation – Richelieu picks up the sharpest of the Infanta’s knives.

* * *

Jean is still shaking a full hour after leaving the chamber behind, though the full-body shivers have tapered off to a mild tremble. A hot bath has soothed him somewhat, as has another meal, this one delivered directly to his chambers on a tray, free of the attendant memories of the private dining hall. But the warmth they provide is only skin deep. Some part of Jean’s core is still cold. He’d had to make himself cold, in order to witness the slow separation of Rochefort’s flesh from his body. And then the sight had chilled him still further. The fingers had been bad enough, but the hands…

 

Jean reminds himself again of what those hands had been used for. Recalls the hated memory of them against his skin, pressing into the vulnerable places of his body, tearing and striking and invading. And yet still he sees them sitting on the blood-stained table, separate from their owner, like a bizarre statue. Sees the stumps cauterized with a hot poker. Hears Rochefort groan in pain.

Remembers how little the groan had mattered, next to the sight of Rochefort unbalanced, undone, somehow so much more shrunken than the removal of such a comparatively small portion of flesh should have made him. It’s not just the flesh but the meaning that had been removed: the ability, the capability, the power. Rochefort will lay his hands on no one else’s skin. He will spread no one else’s body wide, force them to accept his invasion. He will pinch no one else’s flesh. Wield no more knives or whips. Pull no one else back by their hair as he slides his cock down their throat…

Armand had unmanned Rochefort earlier, rendering him sexually impotent with the destruction of his penis. And yet this seems almost the greater unmanning. The afternoon had cost Rochefort his genetic future; the evening had cost him his present.

The sight of Rochefort so destroyed had been indescribable. The relief and the freedom had been overwhelming. So too had been the self-loathing. Jean may not have wielded the knives or the pokers himself, but he knows now that everything Rochefort suffers is at his command. A king may never take to the battlefield but he’s ultimately responsible for what his men do in his name. Armand tortures Rochefort at Jean’s request. No: at Jean’s _demand_. Armand, Jean is beginning to realize, would simply have slit Rochefort’s throat and been done with it.

Jean isn’t ready for that yet. Overwhelming as his self-disgust may be, it’s still balanced out by the relief Rochefort’s suffering is buying him. As long as those forces remain in balance, Jean will wish to continue.  

Armand has stepped away to seek a bath of his own. Rochefort’s blood had stained his skin, despite the protection of robe and smock. Meanwhile Jean lets himself lie back against the pillows of the luxurious bed. He’s still wrapped in a robe from the bath, full from the excellent meal. Cook has struck a middle balance between the plainer foods Richelieu prefers and the richer foods Treville had used to love. The resulting meal sits pleasantly on his stomach, savory enough to tempt but simple enough not to disturb. That sort of insight and initiative is a hallmark among Richelieu’s most trusted servants.

Armand had said he’d be back within half an hour, but it’s been longer than that, as Jean has idled first in the bath and then over his meal. Worry intrudes: what if something’s wrong? A dozen fears line up to be the first expressed. Jean shoves them all back ruthlessly, focusing instead on the physical: getting off the bed, locating slippers, padding over to the connecting door between their chambers. The sight of his hand on the door gives him pause, knowing what comes next, but he steels himself and pushes the door open.

Stepping into Armand’s chambers is like a physical blow. Everything has changed. And yet nothing has. The furniture remains, the linens, the draperies, the rugs and the paintings. It’s just as it has always been. It had been this way when Treville had first met Richelieu, and later, when Jean had first met Armand. It had been this way for all the years they’d been lovers. And it had been this way still when Rochefort had invaded it, laid its sanctuary walls to waste and raped Armand’s lover in its ruins to achieve one final triumph over Rochefort’s seemingly-defeated foe.

It hadn’t ever even really been about Jean. Jean could have been anyone. His title, his military rank, his friendship with the king – all had been convenient but ultimately immaterial. Jean’s relationship with Armand had been the only thing that had mattered to Rochefort. The room is a monument to and a tomb for that relationship.

_No!_

Jean finds himself back in his own rooms, with the connecting door closed, leaning back against it and breathing harshly. A monument, perhaps. But a tomb? _Never_. Jean won’t allow it. Neither will Armand. They will survive this. They _will_.

Jean gathers himself up grimly. Armand hadn’t been in his rooms. He must be elsewhere in the complex. Delayed on business, perhaps. Jean will simply go and find him. He turns towards the door leading to the hallway, and has tugged it partly open before the sound of voices reaches his ears.

Instinctively Jean freezes. So close to having looked back into the rooms that had been his own personal torture chamber, all of his fight-or-flight instincts are on high alert. It takes him long moments before he can hear anything besides the rushing of air in his ears. Longer still before he can calm himself and remember that he’s in a place of safety. Only then does he recognize that the voices he hears belong to Richelieu and Jussac.

Jean should close the door again and leave them to their conversation. Failing that, he should announce himself.

He does neither. He listens.

“It’s too little,” Richelieu is saying in frustration. The two of them are standing in the hallway. Richelieu has clearly bathed; his hair is still flat and damp. He had probably been on his way back to Jean when Jussac had intercepted him. Even as Jean watches, Richelieu sits down heavily on a conveniently placed chair, tucked in an alcove underneath a painting of Paul of Tarsus.

Jussac frowns. “Rochefort’s in agony.”

“So was my Jean. For twelve months.”

Jean shivers to hear it laid out so plainly. Somehow it’s better when he can avoid the precise words for what was done to him, with their harsh, inescapable meanings. Armand, naturally, has no such qualms.

“You can’t do to him what he did to Treville,” Jussac says gently. “You would have to be the sort of man he is, first.”

“God forbid.” Richelieu lets his hands fall from his face. Now he’s just an older man slumped in a richly appointed chair. “I don’t know what else to do to make this right.”

“Be yourself,” Jussac offers.

Richelieu shakes his head. “No.”

“Armand, he loves you.”

“Oh, yes,” Richelieu breathes. “God help me, I never understood just how much until now.”

“Surely you didn’t doubt it,” Jussac protests, neatly echoing the protest that rings in Jean’s heart.

“No. Of course not. But – he always had such a sense of obligation towards me. He thought me responsible for his growth. He’s never credited his own inner strength as much as he ought. And when I let my own feelings slip, and he professed to feel the same in return, how could I be sure that no part of it was obligation?”

“You’re a fool,” Jussac says plainly.

Richelieu laughs, an ugly laugh. “That much is becoming clear.” His head rolls back against the wood of the chair, leaving him staring blankly at the ceiling. “I should never have left him here.”

“No. You shouldn’t.” Jussac sighs. “You should have seen him, Armand. He put himself through all of that – he didn’t tell Milady or I what was going on, at first. I didn’t even find Rochefort had blackmailed him for weeks. Milady was out of Paris. Then, when I found out, he told me it was just politics.”

“You didn’t believe him, I know.”

“Of course not. Rochefort had already given me instructions about his new lover. He didn’t give me Treville’s identity at once, he wasn’t sure he could trust me, but I can add two and two when it’s in front of me. I confronted Treville with it and he begged me not to tell you.”

“Why?” Richelieu whispers.

“Because it would hurt you. He was afraid it would cause you to do something rash. Whatever happened to him, I wasn’t to tell you, because you were more important. When Milady came back he made her promise the same.”

“The brave little fool,” Richelieu swears.

“Even still we didn’t know it was going any farther than sex for months. Only when the injuries started getting too hard to conceal. And we’d already promised not to tell you then.”

“You broke that promise, and rightly so,” Richelieu recalls. “And yet I think – ”

“We still didn’t know the full extent of it. And…” Jussac shrugs. “Treville’s not the only one who believes in loyalty. For a while, we thought that keeping the worst of it from you was best.”

“I don’t know if I’ll forgive you for that,” Richelieu says quietly.

“I know,” Jussac admits.

“I should never have left him.”

“You did what you thought was best.”

“I did. God help me.”

“Treville will understand that. He’ll forgive – ”

“He has already forgiven me.” Richelieu laughs again. “I’m not sure he even thinks there’s anything to forgive. He has such faith in me, Robert. How can he still have such faith after what I left him to?”

“He sees the good in you. As you see the good in him. Love forgives.”

“He shouldn’t,” Richelieu whispers.

“And yet here you are.” Jussac spreads his hands. “Be yourself. That’s all he wants, I’ll warrant.”

“No, I can’t,” Richelieu says.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m angry. No, more than that – I’m furious.”

“Not at him, surely.”

“Never,” Richelieu says at once. “But – he flinches from me, Robert. He can’t tell my touch from Rochefort’s. Not at once. Then when he does – ”

“He’s guilty.”

“You’re right, you know. I’m all he wants. I’m what sustained him these last twelve months. The thought of me. And now that he has me again he can’t relax. And I – every time I see it happen – my heart breaks. And I’m furious. I’m so furious I can’t think straight. I certainly can’t think how to make it right. And I can’t show it, either, because – ”

Richelieu seems to run out of words suddenly and slumps, shaking his head.

“Because he would think you’re mad at him,” Jussac completes. “He’d think he’s failing you.”

“Yes.” Richelieu sighs. “How can I help him, Robert, when things stand like that?”

 _I wouldn’t think that,_ Jean wants to protest. _I would understand your feelings, I would accept them – don’t we share everything, you and I? Didn’t we promise never to hold back or be ashamed?_ Jean wants to run out there and remind Armand of those promises. He wants to demand that Armand hold himself to them, as Jean has been.

He doesn’t. And not just because it would reveal his eavesdropping. Because on some level he recognizes the truth. Armand is right. Jean wouldn’t be able to cope with Armand’s fury, even if it were directed at Jean’s enemy. Jean’s barely able to cope with cold, controlled cruelty. If Armand were to show anger, Jean would recoil in instinctive fear.

Suddenly he can’t bear to hear any more. Jean withdraws as silently as he can. He retreats into the rooms he’s been given and returns to the bed. He lays on his back, staring at the canopy, and thinks of what he’s heard.

Richelieu has several trusted servants, and none more so than the two he’d left behind in Paris after his supposed death. Milady had been forced to leave again during the chaos that had been Rochefort’s snatch for power; she has yet to return, though Richelieu has assured Treville that she’s well, merely on further assignment in Spain, ferreting out the antecedents of Rochefort’s plot. But Jussac is here. Jussac should be in his own accustomed place at Richelieu's side. Instead Jean's barely seen him since Armand's return.

Jean has been so wrapped in his own concerns that he’d failed to fully appreciate this until tonight. He’d seen Richelieu and Jussac interact outside Rochefort’s torture chamber; that should have caught his notice, but Jean hadn’t given it the attention it had deserved. Now, though, now that Jean is less single-mindedly focused on Rochefort, he thinks of it. Now Jean casts his mind back over the past week. Now he realizes that the dissonant note has been present the entire time since Richelieu’s return.

It makes Jean unhappy. _You are my only goal,_ Armand had said. _Your desires are my only desires._ Gratifying, of course. But that’s unworthy of Armand, for Jean to take up so much of Armand’s focus that Armand has nothing left to spare for himself. Armand is no God or King. He may be strong and powerful, but he is still a man, and he has needs that Jean alone cannot fulfill. Armand needs friends. Loyal servants. Brothers. Jussac had been all three. Robert has known Armand for longer than Jean has known either of them. Jean has never known them to be truly at odds. They’ve disagreed, even fought, but never this silent, nagging discord lying unspoken between them.

Jean’s been demanding so much of Armand’s attention that there’s been none to spare for anything else. Jean has been hurt, and badly, and the desire to curl into Armand’s love and never move is so strong that for a moment Jean wavers. But if Treville is ever to come into being again, separate and strong and whole, then Jean must be more than his pain and his desire for solace and revenge.

He’s already vowed to accomplish that. To be the second gentleman who kneels before the King, stands before his armies, sits at the Cardinal’s table. Smiles and laughs and loves in Armand’s bed. This, too, can be done. Must be done. Will be done.

The lamps burn low. Jean closes his eyes.

The light in the practice-yard is slanting through the garrison fence in the long, distinct patterns of midafternoon. Usually that would mean the yards are full of activity and noise: Musketeers fighting, talking, laughing. The Captain of the Musketeers wakes from his nap disoriented. It only takes a moment for him to realize why: there are no sounds. The same light that shines on the practice-yard is falling through the window in his bedchamber and landing full on his face. But there is no noise with the light, and there should be.

He gets up from his cot slowly. It seems to take longer than usual; it seems to be harder. He wonders why, but the thought doesn’t stay put in his mind. It slides away to be replaced by worry. The practice-yards are never silent in the afternoon. What’s wrong?

The door to his bedroom is open. He usually closes it before he goes to sleep, but if today’s nap had been unplanned, that might explain it. The door to his office is likewise open. He walks through them both. He breathes. The dust in the air makes him cough.

The Captain steps out onto the walkway outside of his office. The practice-yard is empty. That explains the silence, but it raises a new mystery: where has everyone gone? Down the stairs he goes. Doors hang open as he passes them. He looks inside. Quarters are abandoned, beds unmade, wardrobes hanging open, as if their occupants had expected to be back at any moment – but the dust is thick on every surface he sees. The armory is empty except for dust motes and empty quivers.

The mess hall is a ruin. He walks through the wide open room slowly. The tables are kindling; broken crockery is scattered everywhere. There are scars on the walls from objects thrown. Something turns under his foot. The Captain stops and looks. A broken sword lies on the ground. The blood on its blade has long since darkened to rust.

He goes outside. The garrison’s doors are closed. He walks through the empty practice-yard, baffled. Those gates are always left open, even at night. But as he gets closer he can see that they’re not just closed. They’re barred, with the great heavy wooden bar that’s there in case of siege, that’s never been used in Treville’s lifetime. There are chains wound through the handles to keep them closed. The doors aren’t just closed. They're sealed.

There’s a piece of parchment on the door. There’s writing on it, but for the longest time, his eyes refuse to focus and the writing won’t resolve. The Captain squints, swearing to himself, rural curses in the dialect of his youth. He may not be a scholar but he can still read! –

_By order of his Majesty, King Rochefort I_

_The order formerly known as the “Musketeers” is disbanded_

_All former members are wanted on the charge of High Treason_

_Comforting his Majesty’s enemies, harboring spies and fraternizing with traitors to France_

_Signed, Labarge, Captain of the Red Guards_

_Long live the King_

“No,” the Captain whispers. “No!”

He raises his hands to beat on the doors. At the first gesture, agony shoots up his arms. He looks down. He’s not beating on the door with his hands. He has no hands. His arms end in scarred stumps, woven through with the thread that had been used to close the wounds, thick and black and dangling still. He’s alone in the husk of the Musketeers’ garrison, walled off and abandoned, maimed and left to die while outside Rochefort rules France and brands the Musketeers as traitors –

He screams.

“Jean!”

The scene shifts. It’s dark – no, not dark – dark would almost be better. It’s dark _enough_ that he can’t make out his surroundings, but there’s just enough light coming from somewhere that he can make out the figure looming over him. They’ve got one hand on his shoulder and the other on his cheek. He wants to flinch, but he knows better. He knows what to do. He swallows. Closes his eyes briefly. Then he grits his teeth and reaches for Rochefort’s belt.

He never reaches it. His hands are caught partway there, his wrists held – pressed back down to the pillows above his head, held there in one hand, while the other hand returns to his cheek. It strokes softly. This time he can’t control his reaction: he shudders in pure revulsion, head to toe, and a soft keen of despair slips past his lips.

“Jean!”

He twists. He knows that voice: it’s Richelieu, Armand, calling to him across the distance. He wants to go to Armand. He struggles. The hands let him go, shocked, and he nearly laughs. How long has it been since he’s actually struggled against Rochefort’s grip? Struggled with more than the instinctive resistance that he can’t always suppress? Struggled with meaning, with training and purpose? Small wonder that Rochefort’s unprepared for it. Rochefort has released him, and he reaches out, ready to follow up his advantage, ready to strike.

The figure falls back. The light is coming in through a gap in the curtains; it illuminates the man in bed with Jean.

Jean freezes. This nightmare is new. Rochefort has never worn Armand’s face before.

The other man swears. He fumbles with something on the bedside; a moment later a lamp flares to life.

“Jean,” the figment says. Gently. Insistently. “Jean, please. You’re dreaming.”

“I know,” Jean says hoarsely. Understanding comes with the light: this isn’t a nightmare, but one of the rare, hopeful dreams of rescue. Jean comes to his knees and reaches out. Armand lets him. Jean touches him carefully: cheeks, forehead, lips, throat. Lower. Shoulders, chest, waist –

Armand stills Jean’s hands there. He doesn’t attempt to peel them away from his skin, just places his own hands over Jean’s, steady and firm. Jean remembers the feel of Armand’s hands: dry, with the skin thin and faintly papery, and warm. Always warm.

“I wish you’d come home,” Jean whispers to the dream-figment. He tastes salt on his lips. “I wish you’d save me.”

“I am home,” Armand pleads. “Beloved, I’m here. I’m real.”

Jean tugs at Armand’s hips where his hands are still held. The atmosphere is still dreamlike; isn’t he still sleeping? Armand visits him often in his dreams, but he’s always gone when Jean wakens. Jean pulls Armand closer on the bed. Clings to him. Dreams are to be clung to. Reality is too terrible to dwell on when it isn’t necessary.

“How can I convince you?” Armand asks.

Jean ignores this. Slowly he pushes and presses until Armand is lying back down again. Jean sits on his hips. This time Armand doesn’t protest when Jean undoes his clothes. Sleep clothes, Jean sees for the first time. That’s new. Jean’s subconscious usually presents him with Armand in full robes or armor. Powerful. Strong. Clad in the trappings of his authority. That’s how Jean likes to think of him: an omnipotent protector. Armand dressed for sleep is human. Armand with his hair mussed and his eyes dark and his chest bare to the moonlight is vulnerable. And he looks as if he knows it. He looks as if it’s Jean who holds the power, Jean who could destroy him in a single moment with a careless word or act.

Something long-forgotten struggles to life again in Jean’s heart. The deepest-buried jewel, longest-hidden and hardest-protected. Jean leans down thoughtlessly, following its unspoken promptings, and kisses Armand. Armand kisses back, hungry and desperate, and Jean remembers: this feeling is love.

The shock of it tears Jean free from the cobwebs of sleep. He sits up again abruptly.

“I’m not dreaming.”

Armand’s hands flutter. He’s always been the kind of man who speaks with his gestures; his hands are as eloquent as his tongue. Now they seem to be at a loss. They settle finally on Jean’s hips where Jean is still sitting astride Armand.

“No,” Armand says carefully.

“You’re here. You’re really here.”

“Yes.”

“You came back,” Jean whispers. He tastes salt again; before he knows it he’s weeping, uncontrollable. He presses his hands to his face but they do nothing to stem the tide. Relief, anguish, love: all of the emotions he’s been so ruthlessly suppressing bubble to the surface and slide down his cheeks in the lamplight.

Armand’s weeping too. Jean touches Armand’s cheek, overwhelmed at the sight.

“You were dreaming,” Armand says. Self-deprecation quirks one corner of Armand’s mouth: Jean presses his thumb to it, stroking, until it relaxes. “You didn’t know me. You were here with me, as safe as I can make you, and yet you were so afraid. Nothing I’d done, nothing I _could_ do, none of it made any difference to you.”

There’s a faint vibration under Jean’s fingers. Suddenly he realizes that he’s not the only one shaking. Armand is sharing this pain with him, trembling and weeping and bleeding inside.

_Oh no. No, please. I wanted to keep it from you. I wanted to protect you. Bad enough that I’m hurt. He mustn’t touch you too._

Foolish. Jean sees that now, with the clarity that had come from dreams and darkness. Futile to hope that this pain could be kept isolated. That’s not how love works. Jean remembers love now. Not just Armand’s love for him, which he’d carried as an icon, an amulet for protection and an ideal to be reached. Jean remembers his own love for Armand. He’d buried it so deeply, seeking only to protect it, never thinking what he’d be leaving himself without. He’d longed for Armand. Dreamed of Armand. Idealized Armand. Only now does he realize, does he remember, that he loves Armand, too. That there’s more to their relationship than power and protection, control and submission. Rochefort had been the master desiring a slave. Armand had desired a lover. That had been why he’d set out to build Jean back up: because whatever they may take from each other in the bedroom, and gladly, beyond its walls they are equals.

“I love you,” Jean says, hearing the wonder in his own voice, the remembrance.

Armand seems almost to shrink. “I don’t deserve that,” he says hoarsely.

_He has such faith in me, Robert. How can he still have such faith after what I left him to?_

“Deserts have nothing to do with it,” Jean says. He doesn’t stop to question where this wisdom has been gained; it comes to his lips, and he gives it voice, letting its truth speak for itself. “I have never felt as if I’ve deserved your love, either. I accept it as a gift. _Gratia plena._ ”

Armand attempts a smile. In the moonlight, it almost works. “How can I argue with sound theology?”

It’s an evasion. Jean feels it instinctively. Armand will try to turn away any attempt to focus on himself. Love opens Jean’s eyes: he remembers how driven Armand is, how focused, when it comes to something or someone he considers his to protect. Jean basks in Armand’s love and care, but he’s always had to fight to get Armand to accept anything for himself.

The darkness makes it easier. The darkness makes the bad things seem far away. Rochefort had never turned out the lights; he’d always wanted to see his victim. Watch every play of emotion across Jean’s face. In the dimness Jean can shove those memories aside for a time and focus on the present.

“I love you,” he says again, more firmly. “I – I’d forgotten that, for a time. I’m so sorry. I tried so hard to keep it from Rochefort that I kept it from myself. Forgive me?”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Armand says instantly. Jean tries to speak again, but Armand shakes his head stubbornly. “I won’t hear a single word of apology from you for what you had to do to survive.”

“Oh,” Jean says softly. There’s nothing he can say against that; it slides through his defenses with the sharpness of truth.

“All I want is to help you feel safe again.” The sadness has crept back into Armand’s voice. Jean can almost feel it in the gentle, hesitant way Armand’s hand comes up to cup Jean’s cheek. “I wish I knew how to accomplish it.”

“I wish I did too,” Jean admits. “I had hoped, simply having you by…”

“Your wounds are deeper than that.”

“I know.”

Silence stretches between them after that admission. It’s not comfortable, but neither is it fearful. Jean simply doesn’t know how to proceed. Even admitting how deeply Rochefort has hurt him is wrenching. He’d clung so long to the belief that Armand would be able to simply sweep back in and set things to rights. Now he glimpses the true damage for the first time, and learns anew the meaning of helplessness. There’s no panacea for this. Armand isn’t God. Jean might have known it, if he’d had the time and space to think clearly. How long had it taken Armand to put him back together the first time? Rochefort will leave scars on Jean much deeper and broader than any of the others ever did.

“Don’t give up,” Jean begs into the silence, suddenly afraid. The ruin that’s left of Jean must seem a daunting, impossible task to Armand. Hadn’t he said as much to Jussac?

_How can I help him, when things stand like that?_

“Listen to me.” Armand sits up. Jean slides back, giving him space, so that they both end up sitting on the bed facing each other. Armand leans forward, intense, and cups Jean’s face in both hands. “I may not know the right way to go forward. I may not know the words that will fix this, or the actions. I may not know how to find out, even. But I promise you that at the very least I will never abandon you. Wherever we go from here, we’ll go there together.”

Jean smiles. Some of his smile is hope. Some is resignation. The knowledge that if Armand ever truly wishes to leave, Jean won’t hold him back. Jean has nothing to hold Armand with except his love. If that’s enough, it’s because God is gracious. God deals with none of them as they deserve. And Armand?

“Together, then,” Jean says, and is rewarded by Armand’s hopeful smile.

They fall asleep together, close enough that Jean can hear Armand’s heart beat, and there are no more nightmares that night.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the new tag: blinding. This chapter again contains some explicit descriptions. This will be the last chapter to do so. Also, the chapter count estimate has been raised to five, with six a small but extant possibility.
> 
> If you're still here, thanks :)

Jean wakes again to dimness, but this time without fear. The echo of Armand’s heartbeat still drums in his ear. It must be a sense-memory, since they’ve rolled slightly apart in the night, but Jean relaxes to hear it regardless. He’s not confused about where he is or why anymore.

The light in the room is the grey of pre-dawn. Jean estimates the time not by the sun, blocked by the drawn curtains, but by the fact that Armand is still slumbering next to him. Richelieu sleeps less than most men, and in the normal way of things begins stirring long before Treville would choose to be up.

Jean can’t have slept much, but he’s no desire to return to sleep. He drowses instead, blissfully dreamless, drifting on the soft exhale of each breath and the muffled sounds of the world outside beginning to come awake. It’s languid. Relaxed. Peaceful, in a way that life hasn’t had the chance to be for a very long time.

Armand rolls over at some point, and ends up half atop Jean, a warm pleasant weight. Jean gives him a fond smile, though Armand can’t see it, and it grows wider when he realizes that the sense of being pressed down doesn’t frighten him. Of course, it’s Armand in bed with him; in the predawn light there’s no chance of mistaking him for Rochefort. And after all Armand’s not _that_ heavy. Jean could shift him easily, and with Armand there are no restraints to prevent it.

Part of the weight pressing down on Jean is firmer than the rest. Armand’s erect; Jean can feel the line of it snug against his thigh. For a wonder Jean’s half-hard himself. By day his body still betrays him, but at night, asleep, safe, some of the old Jean reasserts itself. The old Armand, too. The current Armand, who doesn’t believe he deserves pleasure, who believes that he needs forgiveness and atonement for what Rochefort did to Jean, would never let Jean know that he still feels desire.

Foolish. The proof of Armand’s desire sends warmth and heat racing through Jean. He’s missed this. Perhaps it’s foolish of Jean, too, to think that having been desecrated by Rochefort Armand would no longer burn for his body. But the physical evidence eases a fear Jean has been trying hard to ignore, and a long-unused part of him lights up, gratified and flattered.

For a moment Jean muses on vanity. He’d never had much of it; as a youth he’d been homely, eclipsed by his older brother, handsome and firstborn and charming. As a soldier he’d collected scars and other hard use. He’d enjoyed himself as a soldier does – at least, as much as he could have ever enjoyed himself with women – but he’d never fooled himself into thinking he’d gotten more than what his money had bought. Nor that he would ever deserve more. His father’s lessons had been thorough on that subject.

And eventually he’d risen too far in the ranks even for such things. As an officer Treville had been expected to exchange prostitutes for mistresses. As a noble, and the eventual inheritor of the title after his so-charming brother had died childless, he’d been expected to add a wife to the whole establishment. As a person, he’d been taught his own worthlessness to well to ever believe that someone would desire him beyond title or rank or wealth.

Then there had been Armand. Then everything had changed. For long years Jean had known happiness. He’d belonged to Armand and found peace. Before Rochefort had come and made war against them.

But now, again, there is Armand. Even after Rochefort, Armand still loves Jean. Still desires Jean. Jean doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve this, but he’d submit himself to Rochefort’s torture a dozen times over if it would mean he gets to have this at the end of it.

Armand stirs, the precursor to waking up. In another few minutes he’ll blink his eyes open, and then he’ll give Jean that sleepy smile he gives on the rare occasions that Jean wakens before him. It’s one of Jean’s favorite smiles; he’s looking forward to seeing it again.

And then what? Jean frowns. What will happen to the smile when the memories come rushing back, and Armand remembers his own self-imposed rule that he’s not to ask anything from Jean? Even if Jean assures him it’s well, that he likes it, that he wants it… They’ll just be words. Of all men, Richelieu knows how little words are worth, without action.

Action. A new thought strikes Jean, and he smiles again to himself at the simplicity of it.

It’s easy to urge Armand to roll back against the pillows; in this state, rising through the layers of dreams back to wakefulness, he’s pliant. He protests with a soft groan as Jean slips from his arms, but subsides when Jean only slides downward, never breaking their contact. It’s easy to part Armand’s loose clothing and gain access to the flesh beneath.

Sometimes Armand would wake Jean this way, when there’s no pressing business and no need for Jean to be very obviously elsewhere first thing in the morning. Jean rarely has the chance to reciprocate. But for once Jean is awake first, and he’s going to seize this chance to demonstrate with actions instead of relying on words how much he appreciates and values Armand’s desire.

Jean takes his time. The first slide of his lips around Armand’s cock is hard, as he’s known it would be, and now he has another reason to be grateful that Armand is still sleeping. It’s better if Armand isn’t awake to witness Jean’s first attempt at this since – since Rochefort. Jean can’t help but shudder slightly at the feel of hard flesh in his mouth. Immediately he focuses his mind on the differences. Armand had bathed last night; there’s no sour smell, no taste of sweat, nor flecks of dirt or grime to contend with. Armand is thicker than Rochefort. And Armand won’t call him names. Won’t tell him he’s worthless. Armand won’t seize Jean by the hair and throw him off, slam his head against the bedframe to stun him and then –

Jean hangs onto enough sanity to pull off slowly, avoiding the sudden movement that would surely wake Armand. He has to stop for a moment and just breathe. He rests his head for a moment, cheek pillowed on Armand’s thigh, and makes himself close his eyes and focus on his own heartbeat.

Armand stirs more determinedly. He’ll come fully awake within moments, at his rate, disturbed by the unusual goings-on. Jean has to make a choice. Is he controlled by his fears? Or can he keep himself rooted in the present and go forward down the path he’s chosen?

“J’n?” Armand mumbles.

Jean dives back onto Armand’s cock with an eagerness that would have drawn piercing mockery from Rochefort. Armand stiffens under him, and not just in the natural way: he’s awake for certain now, and dismayed.

“Jean!” he gasps. “What – what are you – ”

_Now there’s a foolish question,_ Jean muses. The flicker of amusement is somehow better than a thousand loving words would have been. It reminds him: this isn’t an ordeal to be endured. This isn’t just a solemn act of love and devotion. This is also supposed to be fun.

That remembrance lightens the mood. Old memories and half-remembered techniques flicker back to life, and Jean gets into the act more, twirling his tongue in the way Armand likes and wrapping his fist around the base of Armand’s cock to apply gentle, pleasing pressure. Jean can take all of Armand down his throat but Armand doesn’t like it when the last few spit-slick inches grow cold in the open air, so Jean helps keep all of him warm even as he bobs his head up and down and swallows around the head. Armand cries out. By the sound Jean knows it’s meant to be words, probably a jumbled conglomeration of fear and dismay. Jean’s gratified to hear it come out unintelligible. To have rendered the mighty Cardinal speechless is a feat to be proud of.

Unlike Jean in the private dining-hall last evening, it doesn’t take long at all before Armand’s balls draw up tight under Jean’s chin. Armand’s hands reach down to tangle in Jean’s close-cropped hair, tugging, trying to pull Jean away. Jean growls impatiently and brushes those hands away. He’s never refused to swallow before and he’s certainly not going to start now.

Armand comes with a gasp and a cry, the loudest Jean’s ever heard him, though still barely an echo in the darkened room. Jean’s pulled back enough to taste him. Half the time Rochefort would have his cock jammed so far down Jean’s throat that Jean would only know he’d come by the sickly feel of something slimy sliding down his throat. Other times Rochefort would pull out almost entirely, leaving only the head of his cock on Jean’s tongue. Sometimes he’d make Jean kneel there, mouth open, until Rochefort was ready to deposit his so-called gift. Sometimes Rochefort would play an idle aiming game and stripe Jean’s face or body with his come. Sometimes Rochefort would make him hold it in his mouth until it had gone cold and tacky and been all but impossible to swallow.

Armand only groans helplessly. He’s hot and salty in Jean’s mouth. Jean drinks him readily, enjoying the control of choosing how to take him in, how to swallow. For Armand, he licks his lips. For Armand, he kisses the inside of Armand’s thigh, the part he knows is ticklish, though Armand wouldn’t admit it for the world – who’d ever heard of France’s bogeyman being ticklish? – and is rewarded by Armand’s twitch and grumble.

Jean takes his time rearranging Armand’s clothing, using the time to try to calm his own breathing. Eventually he realizes he’s stalling. His heart is racing, but it’s as much anticipation as fear. He feels like he’s taken a leap off a cliff into the unknown.

He returns to the head of the bed and lays again at Armand’s side. He smiles.

“Why?” Armand asks. It’s a dozen questions in one. Even now Armand won’t push: he leaves it up to Jean to choose which questions to answer, in what order, and which to ignore.

“Because I wanted to,” Jean says, choosing to answer them all at once. “Because your pleasure is my pleasure and you’ve had far too little of it, of late.”

“More of it than you’ve had,” Armand says stubbornly.

Jean’s smile widens. “Well, these things are often said to be mutual.” He lifts his eyebrows and glances down, suggestively.

“Oh,” Armand says blankly. Jean enjoys the rare sight of Armand flat-footed. It doesn’t last: Armand rallies quickly and smiles. That’s all right. Jean enjoys seeing Armand happy, too.

“What would you like?” Armand asks, tentative but hopeful. “You can have whatever you like.”

“Except you in me,” Jean says. Perhaps Armand’s not the only stubborn one. And perhaps Jean’s pushing for this _because_ he knows he’s not ready. Because he’s always been the reckless one, the one who’d chase pain and risk just to feel briefly alive. Jean had been started down the path to self-destruction at his father’s hands. He knows that now. He knows, because Armand has shown him, that he is not innately wrong, as his father had tried to teach him. But mankind is born to evil as the sparks fly upward; once started, Jean had needed no one else’s help to continue walking down that path. Until Armand had saved him. Armand may say what he likes to Robert about Jean’s inner strength. Jean knows how much of that strength has been Armand’s, generously shared. And Jean pushes now not because he wishes to win this argument but because he wishes to lose. Because he wishes to be reminded, as he leaps off this cliff into the unknown, that his wings may be damaged, that he may fall instead of fly, but that even if he does Armand will always be waiting at the bottom to catch him.

Armand’s smile is wry. “After how you woke me, I don’t think that’s physically possible,” he says gently. The harsher reasons are left unsaid. They shadow Armand’s eyes, but his smile remains.

Then Armand suggests, “Perhaps you’d prefer to take me instead?”

The idea crashes through Jean’s mind all at once, like a brick thrown through a stained glass window. Suddenly he remembers: he _could_ do that. He’d forgotten. God, he’d been so turned upside down that he’d forgotten that he even had that capability. Rochefort would never have entertained such a thought. Rochefort had been obsessed with masculinity and Jean’s perceived lack of it. The only time Jean’s manhood had featured in the proceedings had been when Rochefort had wished to cause pain. The rest of the time Rochefort had behaved as if it hadn’t existed. And Jean, subconsciously, had begun to follow that lead. Even when separate from Rochefort’s orbit, he’d all but forgotten it as anything but a tool to piss from. No longer a source of pleasure. Certainly not – as Rochefort would have described it – as a tool for dominance.

Armand doesn’t suggest dominance. It wouldn’t suit Jean. But more relevantly, Armand doesn’t see it that way. Armand doesn’t see fucking as an inherently dominant act nor being fucked as an inherently submissive one. Jean had liked being taken, and Armand generally prefers to take, in bed as in all other things, and those preferences have weighted their average. But all Jean had ever had to do to reverse matters had been to ask.

He’d forgotten. He’d _forgotten_ that. Even after Armand’s return, Jean had never even once considered asking for that. A simple request, and yet –

“Jean?” Armand’s voice spikes with worry, and he brings a hand up, gripping Jean’s shoulder, the one not pressed into the bed as Jean lays on his side. “Jean, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Jean says shakily. “Nothing is wrong.”

“You don’t look as if nothing is wrong,” Armand says doubtfully.

“I was just – remembering,” Jean says, understating the matter. “I was just – with Rochefort – he would never, of course – and so I – forgot. That I could. That you would.”

Halting as this explanation is, Armand must understand it, because his brows lower and that curious mix of fury and heartbreak passes back over his features. “And now that you remember?” he asks, voice still calm, though Jean can see that it’s with an effort. “Would you wish it?”

“Most ardently,” Jean says with perfect truth. “But not now.”

Armand aborts the movement he’d begun to make to reach over Jean’s shoulder. “Not now?”

“No. Later. After Rochefort’s dead.”

“You needn’t wait,” Armand says carefully.

“I know,” Jean hastens to reassure him. “I _want_ to wait. I want to do it together. I’ll take you, and then you’ll take me. When Rochefort’s dead.”

“But – ”

“Armand.” Jean waits until Armand’s stopped talking, then leans in and kisses him. “Did you hear me? This is what I want.”

It takes Armand a moment, but when he understands, his eyes widen. So does his smile. It becomes more than the gentle quirk of lips that few people interpret rightly. Jean smiles back, nearly giddy with the knowledge of it. He _wants_ this. He knows what could be, he knows his own mind, and he knows that the choice is his to make. And he’s making it. He’s making this choice, and Armand will abide by it. Because Jean wishes it.

“As for right now,” Jean says, breathless with his own daring, “I want you to stroke me until I come all over your hand.”

“Your wish is my command,” Armand says. He means it lightheartedly, and it sounds so, but underneath it Jean shivers to hear the truth.

For the first time he thinks to wonder what the limits of that offer might be. What would Armand give him, if he truly wished it? What wouldn’t he? For of course there _are_ limits. Armand wouldn’t murder the King, for example. But he’d murder others. Torture others. Torture Rochefort. For the first time Jean realizes exactly how far this goes, for Armand. He feels ashamed of not having realized it sooner. Has Armand ever thought Jean hasn’t been serious? No, probably not. Armand knows Jean better than Jean knows himself. And yet Armand does carry _some_ doubt. He’d confessed as much to Robert before.

No. Jean’s wrong. Armand _had_ carried doubt, but he’d confessed in the same breath that the doubt is gone. Jean’s lips twist slightly. After all, there’s nothing left to doubt. Jean has just proven, in the starkest possible terms, exactly how far he’ll go for Armand in his turn. Armand will commit torture. And Jean will permit himself to _be_ tortured.

It’s sobering. It’s exhilarating. It’s frightening. But most of all it’s comforting.

So is Armand’s touch. He wraps one long-fingered hand around Jean’s cock, and Jean is hard and throbbing all at once, an arousal so deep it’s all he can do not to go off immediately. He fights for control. He wants to enjoy this. He wants to cling to Armand’s shoulders, watch the play of emotion on Armand’s face, bask in the pleasurable sensations lighting up his veins. For the first time since Armand had left Jean _knows_ himself to be surrounded and cherished and protected. It’s that, as much as any physical stimulation, that has him coming breathlessly over Armand’s hand.

“As promised,” Armand sighs. Jean can’t help the way his lips twitch as Armand fastidiously wipes his hand off on the sheets.

“I try not to disappoint you,” Jean says, and this time it’s his turn to speak jokingly and still hear the implacable steel underlying the jest.

Armand hears it, too. “You never will,” he tells Jean. “You are incapable of it.”

“All men are capable of disappointment,” Jean says, instinctively trying to play it off. Then he takes a better hold of himself. “But – I love you too.”

Armand rolls over, clasping Jean tightly enough that for a moment Jean thinks he will burst. “And you,” he murmurs, almost too quietly to hear.

Jean buries his hands in Armand’s hair and his nose in Armand’s shoulder. He means to suggest that they rise for the day. A moment later he’s fallen back asleep.

* * *

They do eventually rise an hour later, Armand complaining at the indulgence of having laid in. Jean enjoys hearing it. It’s an echo of how things used to be. Only now is Jean realizing how much has been absent from their interactions since Armand had returned. Yesterday Jean had slept almost until noon, and Armand had never said a word. That Armand feels it safe to complain, in the gentle, teasing way that he uses as a substitute for flirting, means that things are beginning to get better.

By mutual accord, though, they skip the private dining hall, breakfasting instead on a small table placed on a private balcony. Things may be getting better, but there are lines it’s as well not to try to cross too soon. Even on this balcony, where no one had ever eaten before, Jean still feels the old familiar anxiety creeping back up his spine. Simply sitting at a table with Armand is enough to unnerve him. He expects any minute to feel the chair yanked out from beneath him. To hit the ground and then have his face pressed into the tile by Rochefort’s boot on his throat. To be told that dirt is the only meal suitable for his depravity and his knees the only seating he deserves.

Of course none of that happens. But Jean still eats quickly, and only half of what Cook has prepared for him. Armand frowns but doesn’t press. Cook has sent up large portions, no doubt recalling the way things had used to run, and Armand himself hasn’t eaten much more than Jean. Nor does Armand comment when Jean pushes himself up from the table and strides over to the railing, staring out at the private courtyard to hide his face for a moment and regain control over his breathing. Armand lets Jean have the moment, then sets down his knife and fork with an unnecessarily loud sound.

“Shall we move along, my dear?” he inquires, as calm-sounding as if everything is normal.

Jean knows that when he turns around, he’ll see the worry in Armand’s eyes. But it’s nice, for the moment, to pretend that this is simply part of their routine.

“Of course,” Jean says, nodding, though Armand can’t see.

They walk along the main courtyard slowly. The day is pleasant, and Jean finds he’s in no hurry. Armand notices, of course. When they pass the stables, Armand steers Jean into their shade.

“Remember,” Armand says. “This ends when you say it does.”

“I know,” Jean says.

“You don’t even need to decide now,” Armand adds. “Rochefort can be fed and watered and cleaned for some time before the situation becomes acute. You can stay away and think, for a day or even a week – ”

“No.” Jean shakes his head. “That – that would be cruel.”

The flaw in that statement is obvious as soon as Jean utters it. Armand’s lips tug down. “Beloved,” he says gently. “It is already cruel.”

“Crueler, then.”

Armand concedes the point with a tip of the head. But: “Cruelty is the purpose. Or if it is not, then this should end.”

“It is.” Jean turns his head slightly and looks past Armand. As the sun climbs in the sky, more people pour through the main courtyard. It’s massive; the Palais-Cardinal is more like a small village, sometimes, than a simple household. Servants go to and fro. Washerwomen are drying clothes in one corner. In another, blankets are being aired and rugs beaten. In the distance, though out of sight, Jean can hear the familiar clash of steel from the Red Guards’ garrison.

Jean’s senses are full of the reassuring evidence of normalcy. Of safety. Of humanity. And yet, yawning deep inside his heart there is a chasm, where Rochefort yet sits and strives to pull Jean down to kneel between Rochefort’s legs for eternity.

“He hasn’t suffered enough yet,” Jean says finally. For the first time, it occurs to Jean to wonder: what will be enough? What will _enough_ look like? Will he know it when the time comes? Or will he be blind to it, lost in the drive for rebirth, never knowing that his moment has come and passed?

“Then we will correct that,” Armand says, before Jean comes to an answer.

They walk the rest of the way in silence and descend into the underground chamber. The guards on duty salute. Jussac is nowhere to be seen. Jean wonders if that’s on purpose. If Armand and Robert are distancing themselves from one another, or if it’s merely that Armand’s Captain has other duties and cannot be forever guarding a single prisoner, no matter how important. Then Jean puts it from his mind entirely. He can’t deal with everything at once. Right now, this room and this door and what lay beyond it are the limit of his skill.

The door swings open. Armand gestures for Jean to precede him, a courtly reflex that fails to consider how Jean might feel going into that room however briefly alone.

Jean won’t allow himself to flinch. He draws the memory of last night and this morning around him like a shield and walks in with head high and step firm.

The sights and scents of the room assault him as he crosses the threshold. Rochefort is cleaned daily, but he’s fouled himself again since. Jean ignores that with the ease of long practice. On campaign the sanitation is often little better. The scent of blood is harder to forget. Not when Jean knows why and how it’s been put into the air. And underneath it is another scent, one more sensed than smelt: pain.

Rochefort may not have screamed yet – may never scream – but he’s in agony. Jean knows it even before his eyes are pulled to the stumps of Rochefort’s arms, where the bandages are wound tight and stained with red. A stab of bitterness catches Jean by surprise: Rochefort is receiving much better medical care than Jean had, when their positions had been reversed.

The bitterness ebbs as fast as it comes, to be replaced by something curiously like pity. Rochefort may be attended by a doctor, but Jean is the one who will walk away from their encounter with his limbs and faculties intact. Even if Rochefort escapes this instant, he will never again have the pieces of flesh that had been removed, taken and burned to ash last night behind the storage shed.

Then Treville’s eyes meet Rochefort’s, and he fights to remain still. The Comte’s eyes glitter with a madness and a rage that would be frightening enough from a stranger on a battlefield. To see it here, in this chamber, after these horrors, and to know fully and intimately the man from whence it springs –

Nor is that the worst of it. For of course Rochefort sees the pity. Of course Rochefort reads into it all the weakness he’s always seen in Treville. The Comte can no longer speak, and pain has cut lines into his formerly handsome face, but his countenance expresses his thoughts admirably. He mocks Treville without uttering a word.

Rochefort is not the only one who can see. Richelieu has entered the room, and he steps between Rochefort and Treville before Treville can do more than stiffen in dismay, breaking their line of sight. Beneath Richelieu’s iron gaze, even Rochefort seems to quiver.

“I see I made a mistake in thinking I had removed all the organs by which you could do mischief,” Richelieu says at length, dispassionately. “I will correct that now.”

Rochefort’s eyes widen.

Treville looks between them in confusion. Rochefort has clearly understood Richelieu, because he looks – can it be that he looks horrified? What can Richelieu have meant, that Treville does not understand, that nevertheless causes Rochefort horror? Treville would not have thought that Rochefort knows horror. Jean has seen the reaches of Rochefort’s imagination, and it encompasses realms that the Spanish torturers would have shuddered from in revulsion.

Richelieu turns back to the door, still open behind him. The leader of the guard detachment approaches at Richelieu’s gesture. The conversation they hold is too quiet for Jean to hear. A moment later Richelieu returns.

“We will wait a little while,” he says. “Not long.”

“What are you going to do?” Treville asks.

“Solve the problem.” Richelieu turns away from Rochefort and takes Treville’s arm again. “I will ask you again,” he says, keeping his voice down. “Are you sure you wish this to continue? Even so you do, you needn’t be present. You could step outside for an hour. Visit your horse.”

“What are you going to do?” Treville repeats.

“Something terrible.”

Treville nearly combusts. “That’s the entire purpose,” he hisses. And what could it possibly be, that even now Armand warns him? After sitting here and watching Richelieu remove the flesh from Rochefort’s bones, carve up his skin like a fine roast and sever bone like a surgeon –

“The Guard is bringing a special type of iron,” Richelieu says. “It is of medium length and forks at the end. The forks are perhaps half a handspan apart.”

Treville stares at Richelieu dumbly. He doesn’t understand. The lack of understanding must show on his face, because Richelieu sighs, and raises his own hand to his face. His gesture makes everything abundantly clear.

There’s a rushing in Jean’s ears. His knees weaken. He takes a step back, then another, and finds himself sitting in the provided chair, without any conscious knowledge of how he got there.

His vision is oddly hazy. It clears when he blinks. Richelieu has turned back to Rochefort, giving Jean the moment. He’s is busy affixing something to Rochefort’s face. The practical part of Treville’s mind, the part that holds on to sanity in the middle of a battle and guides him to safety, nods in understanding. Of course the bonds that hold Rochefort are secure overall, but for this, his head will need to be specially restrained.

When Richelieu steps back, Treville sees that he’s chosen to use a scold’s bridle. Richelieu had never had one – at least not that Treville had known – but Rochefort had brought one here. It should be fitting that it’s being used on him now. It’s an effective pinion. Once Richelieu is done attaching its bars to the hooks hanging ready on the wall behind Rochefort, the Comte can no longer move his head.

He can’t move his eyes. That’s the point. Treville makes himself think it: Rochefort can’t move his eyes. Rochefort may roll them in their sockets, but those sockets are going to stay in the exact same place, no matter how hard Rochefort struggles. And that, in turn, will let Richelieu apply a hot iron to those eyes. Burning them. Blinding them.

There’s a rattling noise from the corner. Spooked, frightened, Jean looks up and over at Rochefort. The Comte is trying to shake his head, to gain leverage and subsequently his freedom. He’s unsuccessful. The noise comes from the mouthplate of the scold’s bridle, clacking loosely where it hasn’t been screwed down. There’s no point, Treville realizes. Rochefort has no tongue left to pin. But the bands will still be cutting into the flesh of his skull. A small pain, perhaps, after what has been visited on Rochefort so far. And yet the small pains can sometimes be the worst. A large pain may be ignored; a droplet of sweat running down a temple can be an agony all of its own. Does it distract Rochefort from what is to come? Or is it only yet another indignation?

A knock comes on the door. Richelieu opens it, outwardly unruffled. A Guard hands the iron to Richelieu. The Cardinal accepts it and takes it across the room, placing its tines in the brazier. The Guard leaves. Treville can hear the grinding sound of the door being locked again.

He feels paralyzed. Part of him is frozen, unable to think or act or feel. Another part demands action, demands that Treville stop this horror before it can progress to its logical conclusion. But a third part still shrieks louder than them all. A third part is still thirsty for Rochefort’s blood. A third part still believes that Rochefort deserves this – even this. It’s that part that holds Treville in place as, in the brazier, the iron glows hot. It’s that part that keeps Treville riveted, watching, as Richelieu carefully lifts the iron. As Richelieu approaches Rochefort with it. As Rochefort goes nearly mad in his attempt to escape, and gains himself exactly nothing.

As Richelieu presses the hot iron tines to Rochefort’s eyes.

Someone screams. To his dying day, Jean will never know for certain whom it had been. It may be Rochefort. It may be Jean. It may be God himself. Perhaps it’s all three.

Jean will never be able to recall, either, for how long it goes on. It seems to last forever; it seems to be over in a moment. Jean wants to tear his gaze away, but he can’t. He sees how the iron sinks slightly into the soft globes of Rochefort’s eyes. How they seem to bend, almost, at first, before they bubble and burst. Rochefort weeps ghastly blobs of white vitreous and thick clotted tears of blood. They slide down his face and scatter on the floor. The screaming does not stop.

The sound of a door slamming shocks Jean. He tries to look around for the intruder, only to realize that he is the one who’d slammed the door: somehow he’s fled the room, and is now standing in the antechamber, being stared at in shock by four Red Guards.

Somehow Jean manages to wave them off. Somehow he pushes past them and climbs the stairs to take him up to the surface. The brightness of the sun sears him, a pale shadow of what he’d allowed to be done to Rochefort. Jean covers his eyes and stumbles around to the side of the building, where there’s shade, and is sick in the dirt.

He doesn’t know how long he kneels there, but at some point the retching changes from vomiting to weeping. That’s how Armand finds him, seconds or days or decades later. Armand is saying something, soft and regretful and self-recriminating, but Jean doesn’t hear any of it. The only sound in his ears is Armand’s heartbeat, as Armand sinks to the ground next to him and pulls Jean into his arms. The only thing he can feel is the way Armand’s cross brushes against Jean’s shoulder every time Jean shakes.

Dimly he knows that someone approaches them. They’re wearing a Red Guard’s boots; one of the guards from the torture chamber, then, or perhaps Jussac, if any of those guards had been smart enough to realize that this is above their heads and summoned their leader. There’s a short conversation that Jean ignores. The intruder leaves after a moment, and Jean retreats back into the protective blankness that’s encased his heart and soul.

When he finally becomes aware of the world and the passage of time again, the sun has passed its zenith and begun to sink back down again. Armand has coaxed Jean into shifting position a few times, but Jean still feels the tingle of blood rushing back into numbed limbs when he raises his head and attempts to straighten his spine.

“Jean,” Armand murmurs. His voice sounds hoarse: has he been talking this whole time? Jean thinks that he has. He thinks he can remember Armand’s voice, a soft steady stream of syllables helping keep Jean anchored to his body, when he would rather have just drifted free and never come back. “Jean, it’s over. It’s over. Please, Jean.”

Jean tries to speak, to answer him. It only comes out as a croak. That must be enough, though. Armand’s arms tighten around him, then loosen, and Armand helps Jean achieve a seated position, though it ends up with Jean almost half-straddling Armand when neither of them prove willing to let the other go.

Armand produces water. Jean drinks gratefully and doesn’t question from where it’s come.

“I’m so sorry,” Armand says as soon as Jean finishes drinking. Newly able to see Armand, Jean studies him. His usual assurance is gone. Armand looks almost wretched with dismay.

“I asked you to do it,” Jean whispers. “I got what I wanted.”

“You didn’t ask me to do that.”

“I may as well have.”

“Jean – ”

“Is he still alive?”

“Rochefort?”

“Yes.”

“He lives. The doctor – ”

“End it.”

“Jean?”

“Slit his throat. Poison his food. I don’t care. No – I do care. Whatever’s fastest. Don’t leave him like that for a single moment longer than you have to.”

Armand hesitates. “Are you sure?”

“You said it ended the moment I wished it to,” Jean says, sharp with sudden fear. What if Armand refuses? What if Armand insists on prolonging this bloody, painful affair? What if Armand –

Armand takes Jean’s hands in his. “It does,” he swears. “I only need to know that you’re sure. Once done, it can’t be undone.”

“Please.” Jean turns his hands within Armand’s grip and squeezes them. He looks Armand in the eyes and lets his lover see everything. “Please, end it.”

Armand nods. “Do you wish – ”

“No,” Jean says swiftly. “No, God, just – just come back quickly, please.”

“Of course.” Armand stands, helping Jean do the same. “I will only be a moment.”

“Go.”

Armand does. Jean leans against the wall where Armand had left him, focusing all of his strength on remaining upright and on drawing breath. At some point his eyes slide closed and he drifts again.

He’s brought back to reality by Armand’s footfalls drawing near. “Is it done?” he asks.

“Yes. Rochefort is dead.”

Jean opens his eyes. There’s a splash of blood just below Armand’s left cheekbone. Another is visible on his sleeve. So he had slit Rochefort’s throat after all. Yes. It would have been quickest. And Jean had asked for quick. Hadn’t been able to bear the thought of Rochefort existing one moment longer, blinded, maimed, and helpless, under his enemies’ control. The sheer panic and fear that the image conjures threatens to overwhelm Jean for a moment before Armand’s hands shift and settle on Jean’s shoulders.

Without thinking about it overmuch, Jean reaches up to wipe the streak of blood from Armand’s face. Then Jean pauses, staring at the splash of burgundy that’s now on his own hand. It’s still faintly warm. It’s the last living part of the Comte de Rochefort left on this Earth.

“May God have mercy on him,” Jean whispers. “And on me.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one got a little long, but I decided to keep it all together because there's a better than even chance that the next chapter - which should be the last - will be somewhat delayed. Yours truly is going on a vacation :) So it may be the middle of next week before we get to the ending. (Which will be full of sex. Just fyi.)

Armand guides Jean, still stumbling, back to the main building. Under Armand’s guidance, Jean removes his outer layers and allows himself to be tucked back into bed in the comforting sanctuary of his chambers. Armand draws the curtains and joins him, humming Latin chants soft-voiced until Jean dozes.

Jean would have thought that there would be no way he could possibly sleep; he’s not physically tired, and his mind is too busy churning, spinning new horrifying images every time he closes his eyes. But Jean’s body knows what’s best for him even if the rest of him doesn’t. He blinks his eyes back open a few hours later, when the sun hangs low in the western-facing window next to the wardrobe.

Armand, dozing beside him, startles awake. He looks down at Jean with a fearful question on his face.

“I didn’t mean to sleep,” Jean says lamely, unsure of what else to say or do.

“You’ve barely been sleeping for the last year,” Armand reminds him. “You’re still recovering from that.”

“Well. I’m awake now.”                          

“So you are.”

Armand says nothing further, merely waiting patiently, a question hanging in the air between them. Jean blinks dumbly at it until realization dawns.

“I’m all right,” he says. It’s an exaggeration, but only, he knows, a small one. And saying it out loud firms it up, makes it more real. Makes it less of an exaggeration. He _is_ all right, even after this morning’s events. Or: he will be. And that’s enough to be going on with for now.

After all, he can’t spend the rest of his life asleep while Armand hums to him. Even if there will be times – and Jean knows from past experience that there _will_ be times – that that will be all he wants to do.

Armand smiles a little at this response, though he must know its caveats as well as Jean does. Relief flashes through his eyes like lightning after a storm. It’s gone before Jean gathers his scattered wits enough to ask after it. Then Armand is urging Jean out of bed.

Though it’s still barely late afternoon, a bath is already waiting. Jean must have been sleeping deeply indeed, for he’d never heard Armand ring the bell, nor talk with the servants. He hadn’t even been disturbed by the noise of the bath being brought through and filled. There’s a servants’ entrance to the bathing room; they wouldn’t have had to troop directly past Jean, and the door that connects the bathing room to the bedroom _had_ been closed. But Jean isn’t used to the background rhythms of a well-run manor house anymore. That they hadn’t awoken him is a testament to how exhausted Jean must have been. Emotionally, if not physically.

Jean moves towards the bath eagerly. Armand never leaves Jean’s side. He undresses Jean and guides him into the tub, then washes Jean with gentle thoroughness, as if the act of physical ablution can wash away sin. Coming from Armand, perhaps it can. In Armand’s keeping, Jean has never feared for his immortal soul. He decides against starting now. Armand has always been his sanctuary. Armand has always tried to give Jean what Jean needs.

And Jean can feel the knots loosen in his chest, the tension flow from his arms and legs, as Armand drags the cloth over him. When Armand kisses him, it’s headier than wine. When Armand smiles at him at the end, wraps him in a thick towel and calls him _beloved_ , it’s better than God’s forgiveness.

When Jean’s done, Armand bathes quickly, while Jean takes his time dressing. There’s no rush any more. Nowhere else to go. Nothing to do. Rochefort is dead.

_Rochefort is dead._ Jean pauses in the act of toweling off his hair, letting that sentence, that reality, expand to its full weight and measure. Rochefort is dead. He will never hurt Jean again. At least not directly. His ghost remains, and his ghost has a power all its own. But Jean can drain that power. Unlike the true Rochefort, the ghost is ultimately and only under Jean’s control.

Time has been playing tricks on Jean lately. Intellectually he knows that it’s been barely twenty-four hours since he’d arrived at the Palais-Cardinal. But emotionally it feels as if it’s been weeks. The state of his chambers belies this. Most of the supplies Armand has stocked the chambers with have barely been touched. Jean had used various toilette items this morning, and dressed in the provided clothes, but without taking the time to explore. He does so now, while Armand watches fondly from the tub through the open door.

Looking through the various drawers and wardrobes, Jean is reminded all over again that these rooms had originally been intended for the _lady_ of the manor. The great Cardinal Richelieu could never marry, of course, but the rooms had been furnished anyway, in the usual style of noble houses. That means lighter woods with more delicate embellishments, a more liberal use of blue and white paint, and a few pieces of furniture whose purpose Jean finds frankly baffling. The fairer sex are still a mystery to him. It’s somewhat ironic that that’s the space he finds himself filling in Armand’s life.

_Let’s see if there’s anything left between your ears after years of bending over for Richelieu,_ Rochefort purrs from the past. _I only allow women in my bed._ _You_ _are in my bed. Now, think carefully, Captain… What does that make you?_

“Jean?” Armand’s voice in the present breaks through the fog of the past. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” is Jean’s first, instinctive reaction. Then he remembers himself. He turns to face his lover and admits, “A bad memory. It’s gone now.”

“Are you – ”

“I’m fine.” To prove it, Jean smiles at him, real and warm enough that Armand relaxes slightly.

Still, Jean decides to take the flashback as a sign that he’s explored enough for one afternoon. He returns to the wardrobe to dress. Instead of just taking the garments atop each pile, as he’d done this morning, Jean looks through the options. They’re all well-made, of course. Armand would never settle for shoddy craftsmanship. But thought has clearly been taken for Jean’s preferences. Jean may enjoy rich meals, but when it comes to clothes he favors utility over fashion. Armand is the one more given to sartorial finery. In the drawers and the wardrobe Jean finds piles of clothes, all beautifully tailored, carefully sewed, and _plain_. The only variation is in color, and even those are subdued. Blue appears more often than any other hue – no doubt in deference to the Musketeers’ regimental colors – but the chosen shade is more reminiscent of the sky at dusk than the robin’s-egg blue of Jean’s uniform cloak. Blacks and greys make up most of the rest.

Red appears only sparingly. Jean never wears it in the usual course of things. Colors, uniforms, symbols: these things have power, well beyond what might be expected. Red has too many of the ‘wrong’ associations for the outside world. By the same token, Armand is never to be found in blue. But a few garments in the red hue have made their way into this pile. More of Armand’s prescience? Or an impulse he’d been unable to resist?

Jean pulls out one of the red shirts from near the bottom of the pile. He, too, is unable to resist the impulse. Armand is the only thing he’s sure of. His lone constant in an ever-changing world.

It occurs to Jean suddenly that Armand may very well feel the same way about him.

Armand climbs out of the bath as Jean finishes lacing up the shirt’s generous cuffs. Jean takes the opportunity to bring Armand a towel, smiling as Armand uses it to wrap Jean up against his own damp body and kiss him warmly. Jean wriggles from Armand’s grasp after the second kiss, bringing the towel with him and rubbing Armand down none-too-gently.

“You’ll catch your death of cold,” he mock-scolds. If Jean’s going to be the lady of this household, he’ll enjoy a few of the traditional privileges, such as scolding his lord. The thought makes him smile. Better yet, it disturbs no further echoes.

“Bah,” Armand says succinctly. He dabbles in many things, and enjoys the knowledge of many more. He knows better than Jean how little threat is actually posed by frequent bathing. When it comes to himself, Armand’s finicky as a cat. And Jean had needed little persuasion to adopt daily bathing after coming into Armand’s possession. Back then the sour scent of unwashed flesh had been linked inextricably with the various abusive lovers Jean had taken up with before Armand. Though Jean had found the strength and courage to leave Troisville eventually, he’d just ended up repeating the pattern with other men who had been more like Jean’s father than Jean is comfortable remembering, even now. Once Jean had realized that regular bathing had meant physical intimacy would be free of those pervasive scents he’d signed on with a will, at least insofar as a soldier is ever able.

His Musketeers had even followed his lead to varying degrees, which had only fed the jibes of the other regiments that they were a corps more concerned with their looks than their swordsmanship. The inevitable duels that have followed have had the paradoxical effect of making sure that even in a time of peace the Musketeers are the best fighters in France – as even the Red Guards have been forced to concede on a few highly treasured occasions.

In fact, now that Jean thinks about it, the repeated duels between the Musketeers and the Red Guard – a frequent cause of complaint for Armand – are ultimately Armand’s own fault. The idea tickles Jean. He turns, wondering if Armand will appreciate it as he does.

Armand has moved on while Jean had contemplated bathing, and passed back through the door connecting their chambers to dress. Done, he comes back to Jean, and pauses in the threshold just as Jean turns to look for him. Shrewd eyes take in Jean’s clothing and Armand smiles.

“Comfortable?” Armand asks. “They are to your liking?”

“Very much so,” Jean agrees.

“I’m glad.” Armand comes over to kiss Jean, running a pleased, possessive hand down Jean’s shoulder and arm. Jean presses into the touch like a cat, loving the feeling of proud ownership, wanting more. Armand obliges.

“It’s well after midday,” Armand observes carefully after they separate.

“I’m not very hungry,” Jean has to admit. He’s been doing a good job of keeping his mind off the events of this morning – the impromptu nap has helped, as has the bath – but appetite will be a longer time returning, he thinks.

“Neither am I,” Armand agrees.

“Because of – that?” Jean’s trying to fold up the discarded towel; he frowns down at it, wondering why it’s suddenly gotten so difficult.

“Yes. I suppose it’s counter to my image, but even I am not indifferent to the horror I can cause.”

Jean looks swiftly up. That had been bitterness he’d heard, lurking underneath the calm front of Cardinal Richelieu.

It’s not the severe Cardinal standing before Jean, though. It’s Armand, looking regretfully at the floor. Jean reaches out to tip Armand’s chin back up and watches as Armand’s gaze refocuses on him.

“Do you think I don’t know that?” Jean asks. He takes Armand’s hands in his own, tugging until Armand follows him to sit on the nearby lounge. “Do you think I’ve loved you this long without learning that?”

“This isn’t a part of me to which you’ve had much exposure.”

That much is certainly true, Jean can admit. Much of the Cardinal’s work is conducted in the shadows by necessity, while the Captain fights Louis’ enemies under the clear light of day. Treville’s never had the stomach for what Richelieu does. Never wanted to gain it, either. Never wanted to know about it. Nor, even, to hear about it. He’d preferred to pretend it had never existed.

Cowardly, perhaps. And yet Armand had let him get away with it. Had let Jean be the one to call him coward, during some of their more public fights, without ever saying a word against it. Not even afterwards, in private.

Now it’s a memory of Armand that whispers in Jean’s ear. _There are parts of me you’ve known about intellectually but never chose to view in depth. This is one of them. I am a torturer. Rochefort is not the first person to be chained in this chamber. Nor is he the tenth. He may possibly be the fiftieth. I have not kept track_.

When, Jean wonders, had he become so selfish? Even before Rochefort, he’d gladly taken Armand’s strength, his support, his love. He’d accepted Armand’s comfort for his own hurts, Armand’s healing for the wounds of his past, Armand’s steady faith in Jean’s ability to do what is necessary. How had he never realized how much Armand might need those things from him, too, in his turn?

Jean’s under no illusions that he might be able to offer Armand the tenth part of what Armand’s given him over the years. Never mind what Armand continues to give him now. But whatever little Jean can offer is all Armand’s, without question or reserve.

“What do you want?” Jean asks for the first time since Armand’s return.

Armand’s caught by surprise. It barely shows, but Jean can see it in the widening of his eyes, the slight parting of his lips. He doesn’t answer immediately. Instead he studies Jean carefully, probably to judge how sincere Jean is in his offer.

“There are some letters that have come for me since my return,” Armand says finally. Carefully. “Not politics. From Alfonse – and the _Académie_ – and some notes on a new manuscript that may contain a fragment of the Gospel – ”

“Riveting,” Jean says dryly. He wants to be kinder, but some sixth sense tells him that that will only worry Armand more.

“If you’re willing, we might go to my office,” Armand goes on, somewhat more boldly. “Your books are there.”

Jean smiles in spite of himself. Armand is one of the few who knows of Jean’s love of novels, a secret jealously guarded and rarely indulged. Armand patronizes several literary _salon_ s in Paris, and he’d taken to bringing Jean books from time to time, when he’d found something he’d thought Jean might like. He’d expected at first that Jean would smuggle the books back to the garrison to read in his little spare time. Instead Jean had claimed a shelf in Armand’s office and stored them there. Read them there, too, on the lounge that had mysteriously appeared one day, conveniently positioned beneath a brace of candles that give clear even light. And so it had happened that many times when Armand had had to work late into the night he had no longer had to do so alone.

Then Jean’s smile slips as memory intrudes. Jean has been in Armand’s old office as often this last year as he ever had before. Rochefort had enjoyed having someone to service him while he’d done his own black work. And Jean can’t stop himself from recalling the changes Rochefort had made. Not when Rochefort had had no trouble in guessing the true ownership of the novels. Not when Rochefort had burned them all and fucked Jean on the stone floor in their barely-cooled ashes, scooped from the grate for that purpose. Jean had had to clean the floor afterwards. Scrape the ashes up with his bare fingers, no tools allowed, and then wash the stones with his tongue.

“My books – they’re gone,” Jean says softly, the memory bright in his eyes. This time he almost welcomes it. It rekindles his anger and hatred, reminding him of why he’d allowed – no, encouraged – this morning’s events.

Rochefort doesn’t deserve Jean’s pity. If Jean feels regret for this morning, it should be for his own sake, not for Rochefort’s.

“I should have said they are there _again_ ,” Armand says. “I saw they were missing – they’ve been replaced.” He tries a smile. “Plus a few additions.”

Jean blinks. “They have?” The eagerness in his voice is unmistakable and a little embarrassing. They’re just books, after all.

Armand’s smile grows wider, though, so it’s worth it. “Does my idea meet with your approval, then?”

“It does.” Jean nods. Suddenly he can’t think of anything he’d rather do than spend the afternoon in peace and quiet with Armand.

He holds his hand out to Armand, an open invitation. Armand accepts it. He tucks Jean against his side and draws Jean out into the corridor.

The walk to the office is short – it would hardly make sense for Armand to keep his work and his chambers too far separated, not when he spends so much time moving between them – but it’s long enough for Jean, looking around with fresh eyes, to appreciate anew how much things have changed in such a short time. Rochefort had gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure that every room, corridor and closet in the Palais-Cardinal had borne some mark of its new ownership. It had taken the mad Comte weeks to achieve to his satisfaction. And yet it appears to have taken only days for it all to vanish again. Paintings and statuary are once again in their accustomed locations. Draperies, carpet and candelabra alike have been relocated. Wood has been refinished. Destroyed pieces have been replaced with items so identical to the old that Jean suspects Armand of having laid out quite a bit of extra money to achieve it. But it’s reassuring, and not just for the familiarity. It affirms that Richelieu is just as invested in eradicating Rochefort from their lives as Treville is.

The office comes with its own set of memories. This time Jean hangs back as Armand opens the door, and Armand, taking the hint, enters first. Jean takes a deep breath and follows him.

Armand looks like he wants to ask, but restrains himself and instead gestures wordlessly to the shelf Jean had used to keep his books on. As promised, it’s been filled again. Jean walks over and sees that many of his favorites have been replaced. Not all, and not always in the same editions, but most of them are there. He touches a familiar red-bound spine and smiles.

There are new novels too, but Jean doesn’t want something new right now. He selects an old favorite and takes it over to his usual lounge. Or at least what looks like his usual lounge.

“Is it the same one?” Jean asks. The lounge had already been gone the first time Jean had entered the office under Rochefort’s tenure. Jean had known better than to bring it up, even then, but he’d always wondered. Had Rochefort removed it simply as part of his campaign to leave his mark in every corner of Richelieu’s manor? Or had he guessed its purpose? Jean had initially assumed the latter. But then, Rochefort had never been shy about using anything of Armand’s against Jean, whether real or only suspected. And Rochefort had never mentioned the lounge.

“Yes, it’s the same,” Armand answers from behind his desk. He’s sitting, but hasn’t yet opened any drawers or removed any papers. He’s just watching Jean. “We found it in a storeroom down near the kitchens. I don’t know what Rochefort was thinking, to place it there, but it was only a little damaged. It’s been reconditioned.”

Jean settles himself down in it. It’s pushed along the near wall, at a right angle to Armand’s desk, which is opposite the fireplace. When Jean lies on it and faces forward he’s facing the fire and Armand can’t – quite – see his face. A veneer of privacy to preserve the illusion that this is a public space. And to give Jean a place to hide without hiding, should he want one.

Jean takes advantage of it now to keep Armand from seeing the way his mouth twists with sadness. If only he were so easy to recondition as a chaise lounge. But then, he’d been more than a little damaged.

When Jean doesn’t answer, Armand seems to take it as a wish for silence, and says nothing further. From behind him Jean can hear Richelieu drawing his chair up to the desk in preparation for work. The sound sparks a brief flare of guilt in Jean’s heart. It’s a reminder that Jean is keeping Armand away from many important things. It only lasts a moment. Jean is starting to realize, finally, how important a thing he himself may be, if only to Armand.

They settle down, but not for long. Armand is unusually restless. Old memories and instincts swim to the top of Jean’s recollection: something is weighing on Armand’s thoughts that prevents him from focusing. It will spill over shortly, if Jean doesn’t distract Armand first.

He chooses not to. He relaxes into the familiarity of it, though it’s old and almost musty like a room left abandoned for too long. First the swishing of cloth as Armand shifts position. Next the rustling of papers as Armand leafs through them, looking for something to hold his attention. Then the huff of self-directed frustration as Armand fails to settle down to his work.

Hidden by the back of the chaise lounge, Jean smiles to himself. Here it comes.

“Jean?” Armand asks.

Jean makes sure the smile is gone from his face before he turns his head, meeting Armand’s gaze. “Yes?”

Armand opens his mouth, closes it again, then sighs. “I had thought Rochefort had simply destroyed the books as he’d destroyed all of the other papers I’d left behind. But, the way you reacted earlier…” Armand sighs. “Rochefort did more than that, didn’t he.”

Now it’s no trouble for Jean to keep the smile from his lips. He lets the book fall to his lap, leaning his head back against the lounge and staring up at nothing. “Yes.”

“Will you tell me about it?”

Jean doesn’t want to. He wants to forget it. But Armand has the right idea; venom isn’t cured through willful ignorance. It must be drained. So he tells Armand, slowly, keeping his gaze on the ceiling. He doesn’t realize until he’s finished that one hand has been resting lightly over his stomach the whole time. Rochefort had piled the fireplace ashes in a heap, and like all heaps they’d been thickest in the center, where Rochefort had positioned Jean. Jean had been able to protect his extremities somewhat, but pinned under Rochefort’s unforgiving weight, there hadn’t been much he could do for his torso. As Rochefort had ground Treville’s belly into the ashes, he’d found out the hard way that there had still been a handful of embers burning in their depths.

The resulting pockets of reddened skin had been tender for days. None of them had scarred, thanks to the grace of God and a certain balsam d’Artagnan’s mother had apparently taught him to make as a child in Lupiac. But Rochefort had noticed that the area had been vulnerable and focused his attention there, enjoying Treville’s torment, until finally it had healed and Rochefort had moved on to other, more fertile pastures.

One tale leads to another. Once he’s started Jean doesn’t seem to be able to stop. Armand comes over to sit on the lounge with Jean as Jean tells Armand of the many nights when Rochefort had been here, in this office, when Treville had arrived at his summons. Of the expectations set for Treville in that situation. Kneel. Crawl. Remain. For hours, sometimes. Kneeling at Rochefort’s side, or under the desk out of sight, limbs cramped and shaking, jaw aching around Rochefort’s cock, knowing he must not make a sound or else betray himself in front of whomever Rochefort might be entertaining. Of the wretched gratitude Treville would be made to feel for being permitted to hide under the desk at all; in front of Rochefort’s personal servants, those who had followed him from Spain, Rochefort would display Treville openly. Of the threat, frequently spoken though never put into practice, that Rochefort might decide to share Treville out one day. Give him to Rochefort’s men as a reward for their achievements. After all, what did whores do but spread their legs for soldiers?...

When Jean finally falls silent, he leans against Armand’s warmth and sighs. He feels empty. It’s not a wholly bad feeling. Retelling Rochefort’s cruelties makes Jean live them again, but it also lets himself rid himself of them, in a curious way. With them gone – even if only temporarily, even if they will later return to torment him further – Jean can breathe again. Better an empty field than one choked with weeds. The empty field can be planted anew.

“Forgive me,” Armand says at last, after they’ve been silent for several moments in the wake of Jean’s confession.

“What for?” By now Jean is used to what it sounds like when Armand feels guilty for leaving Jean behind: this has a different flavor.

Armand looks down at Jean and attempts a smile. “Even with how you reacted this morning, I can’t bring myself to regret anything you permitted me to do to Rochefort before his death.”

“Oh.” Jean tries to come up with a reply to this. After a moment he just nods.

“I’m sorry for that,” Armand goes on. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to better prepare you for what you’d see, or ensure that you could watch it more comfortably. But – ”

“Oh, no. Armand, no,” Jean says swiftly. The lounge is crowded with two but Jean manages to roll onto his side, putting he and Armand more on eye level. “Armand, there’s no way I could have watched any of that comfortably. Nor should I have. Torture should never be comfortable.”

“I know you regret that.”

“No,” Jean says, slowly now. His own thoughts and feelings are sometimes a mystery to him, but the only mystery now is that Jean can know them so clearly, even after such a series of events. “I don’t regret it. Not that. Not what you did to Rochefort.”

“Then what?”

“Many things.” Jean tries to laugh, unsuccessfully. He abandons the effort after a moment and just lets himself lean into Armand, soaking up his warmth, his strength, his reassuring presence. “I regret not leaving with you in the first place. I regret my own pride, which made me so sure I could take whatever Rochefort dealt out. I regret making Jussac and Milady swear silence. I regret not releasing them from that promise sooner.”

“I would have come. Please tell me you know I would have come.”

“I know. Don’t you see that’s why I wouldn’t let them tell you?”

Armand seems to have nothing to say to that. He looks troubled.

“But I was so turned around, I thought those were my only choices. Either I toughed it out or you returned. If I’d been thinking straight I would have realized I had a third option.”

“What?”

“Leave,” Jean says simply. “Even if I’d had to make up an excuse – just leave Paris. Take a leave of absence from the Musketeers, say I was needed on my estates. And later, after Rochefort had me stripped of my command, no one would have wondered if I’d left court…”

“Being Captain is important to you.”

“Was. _Was_ important to me.”

“Has it ceased to be so?” Armand looks at him searchingly. “You accepted this position on the council because the King insisted, but – ”

“Rochefort forcing me out of the position made me realize I’d outgrown it,” Jean says. This he can explain easily enough. Before Armand’s return, in the cold cruel clarity brought about by Rochefort’s ruthless approach to self-examination, Jean had spent more nights than he cares to remember coming to this realization. “I viewed the position as a shield against the world, but I’d grown too prominent for it to protect me. I relied upon it to give me standing, because I hated to think of my inheritance, and then when I lost it it was too late to dust off my title. I used it to define myself. But when Rochefort pushed me, my position wasn’t what I sacrificed to protect.”

“What was?”

Jean decides words would only get in the way of answering that question. He kisses Armand instead.

It lasts only a moment; Jean has to lift his head to reach Armand’s lips, and his neck begins to ache in short order. He pulls away and settles himself back down on the chaise. “I regret not realizing that sooner,” Jean adds, returning to the topic at hand. “If I had, I wouldn’t have chosen to remain behind when you had to leave Paris. I thought I needed the Musketeers, that what you’d left behind of yourself would be enough. I was wrong.”

“You’d manage without me if you had to,” Armand says.

“I never want to,” Jean replies simply.

Armand sighs. “And yet, in all this list of regrets, torture doesn’t number among them?”

Jean is shaking his head before Armand has even finished speaking. The word _torture_ doesn’t even cause an involuntary flinch. “I regret _not_ regretting it. I regret that going to that extreme was – necessary – to me. I regret not having realized what my own limits were sooner. I regret…”

The words desert him. Armand, watching his face, completes: “You regret the part of yourself you’ve lost, that leaves you able to accept what was done to Rochefort.”

“Yes,” Jean breathes. “Yes, that’s it.”

“I regret that too,” Armand admits.

Jean tenses. “How much?” He’s afraid to look up all of a sudden. It’s ludicrous. Jean’s never been some pure, sheltered creature. But in his own way, he sees now, he’d been innocent. He’d been able to scorn Armand’s dirty work with the true indignation of a man who’d never been made to walk the shadows.

Now he’s lived in them. Now he knows how much it must cost Armand to walk among them, and yet return at the end to the light of day. He’s sorry now for every ill word he’s ever cast on the subject of back-alley stabbings and dishonorable murders. And he’d be even sorrier to discover that Armand values Jean less for having lost that light.

“Softly,” Armand murmurs. Jean realizes he’s trembling faintly. Armand’s tugging Jean into his arms. Pressed together, Jean can see the patient love Armand bears him – settled not in the lines on Armand’s face, but in the gentle firm sweep of his hands. It’s just as Jean had seen it first all those years ago. When Armand had first brought Jean into his private world, broken through his barriers, and held Jean while he’d wept.

“I don’t regret your growth,” Armand explains quietly. “Nor the person you are now. I only regret that it was so traumatically achieved.”

“Perhaps it had to be,” Jean whispers. “Perhaps it could never have been otherwise.”

Armand takes a few moments to think about it. “Perhaps,” he agrees at last.

That verdict, so steadily delivered, calms Jean. It also kills the nascent fear of having lost value in Armand’s sight. Jean relaxes finally, burrowing into Armand’s robes and drifting on his relief for long minutes.

A log breaks in the fire, sending sparks skyward that Jean hears rather than sees. A rumble down the hallway signals the maidservants beginning the evening’s chores. Outside this room the world keeps turning. So it would. The sun has risen over the scarred ruin of every battlefield Treville has ever survived. It does the same now over the Palais-Cardinal, where Jean has fought and triumphed.

“There’s a plot of earth in the northwest corner of the complex that’s nominally part of the kitchen gardens,” Armand murmurs eventually. “It’s never planted. Nor, usually, is it marked. Rochefort’s remains will be placed there. Would it benefit you, if I caused his resting place to be marked?”

“The kitchen gardens?” Jean feels his brow crease in confusion and lifts his head to look at Armand. “Placed there? But what about his soul?”

Armand smiles fondly down at him. “I’ll go back tonight for funeral rites,” he promises. “You may join me if you like, or retire early. As for the gardens, the ground is consecrated. Beyond that his soul is in God’s hands.”

Armand doesn’t have to say that he believes redemption impossible for Rochefort. That belief is written all over his face. Jean doesn’t know what he himself believes, except that he’s known Armand’s mercy, and surely God’s must be even greater. Regardless, he doesn’t want to taint himself or Armand by failing to give Rochefort every possible chance. He smiles back at Armand, relieved.

“Thank you.” Jean pauses to consider it. “I think… I think I’ll retire early tonight.” He doesn’t want to see Rochefort again, even in death. He prefers to let Rochefort’s corpse lie in the chambers from whence he’d fled. Beneath the earth, in darkness and alone – a fitting enough replica of the grave to which all roads eventually lead.

“And the marker?” Armand prompts.

This question doesn’t answer itself so easily. “Mark it for now,” Jean says finally. “I don’t know if I – but it can always be removed later.”

“Of course,” Armand agrees easily. He kisses Jean again, and Jean takes advantage of the improved angle to deepen it.

It may be minutes or hours before a demure tap on the door pulls them from their reverie. It’s not repeated, nor does any voice call in. The tap is enough. A quick glance at the clock confirms what long habit has already told Jean: the tap had been a signal that supper is prepared, and awaits their attention.

“They’ll have set it up in the private dining room,” Armand realizes in some dismay. “I never gave orders otherwise.”

That gives Jean pause. And yet… which memory is stronger in his mind? The old ones Rochefort had created, or the new one he and Armand had made only yesterday?

More to the point, how will the new memories ever outnumber the old, if Jean flinches from making them?

“Let’s eat there,” Jean says impulsively.

“Are you sure?”

“No,” Jean admits, compelled to honesty. “But I want to try.”

* * *

Dinner goes better than Jean had feared, though not as well as he’d hoped. He makes it through the first course before the memories start choking him. A short walk on the veranda – alone, by his request – gives him the wherewithal to endure the main course, though not with anything like his old enjoyment. Armand watches the whole affair with visible anguish and a barely-concealed desire to do something, anything, to fix matters. It takes all Jean’s repeated assurances to keep Armand in his seat, at least pretending to eat, instead of spending the whole meal hovering over Jean’s every bite.

“I will never get back to normal if we keep making exceptions,” Jean says in determination.

“The old normal is gone,” Armand says. “You will get better. Of that, I have no doubt. But the ‘better’ you will get may bear little resemblance to the way things used to be.”

“That’s as may be. But I want my new better to include eating at the table with you.”

Armand isn’t able to argue with that. Instead tells Sally to clear the table after the mains, charging her to apologize to Cook for skipping the remaining courses. Sally promises, and leaves the little palate-cleansing sherbet cups behind to serve as an impromptu dessert. They eat those on the veranda too. Under the stars, with the darkness as a cloak and Armand at his side, Jean can pretend that the better he will become is already here.

Armand walks him back to his chambers after, a courtly, old-fashioned gesture that doesn’t quite cover up the worry Armand still obviously feels. He lingers in the doorway, watching as Jean disrobes.

“These are nice,” Jean says of the clothes as he folds them and lays them aside, hoping to distract Armand. “I’m sorry, I haven’t thanked you yet for – all of this.” His gesture takes in the beautifully appointed chambers. The careful thought put into the supplies that stocks them. All the ways Armand has been working to keep Jean comfortable, physical and emotional alike.

Armand shrugs off this praise. “I wanted to do it,” he says. “I’m pleased that you’re pleased.”

“It goes both ways,” Jean reminds Armand gently. He dredges up a smile from somewhere and puts it on his face, gentle and fond. “I know you like seeing me in things you’ve bought me. I like wearing them, too.”

“There are – ” Armand pauses, then starts again. “Of course you have clothes of your own,” he says delicately. “But if you wish it, there could be a second full set, just like these, for you to take with you to the Louvre.”

The Louvre. Jean’s eyes widens. The red shirt, still in his hands, slides through numb fingers to land on the floor.

_Rochefort’s dead_. The thought, so heartening this afternoon, returns now to haunt Jean with dread. Rochefort is dead. Jean’s excuse for remaining here is at an end. Jean will have to leave. Go back into the world. Move into the Louvre. Leave the behind the Palais-Cardinal, these chambers, all of these items, and most importantly Armand’s presence.

“Jean?” Armand is across the room in an instant. “Jean, if the idea doesn’t please you, think no more of it. They’re only clothes.”

“That’s not it,” Jean whispers. He lifts his gaze blindly to Armand’s. “I – I’ll have to leave soon. Won’t it? Now that Rochefort is dead.”

Suddenly Jean is furious with himself for not having realized the implications sooner. If only he hadn’t been in such a hurry. There had been no need to start right in on making Rochefort scream the first day Jean had arrived here to stay. Nor to go back after dinner last night, nor again this morning. If Jean had been wiser, if he’d delayed and spaced it out –

“You are not going anywhere until or unless you are ready and willing,” Armand says firmly.

That tears a bitter laugh from Jean. “You may rule in this manor, but Louis is King beyond these walls. It’s his Council I’m to serve on. It’s his laws that govern France. Those laws say that I need an excuse to be here, and that excuse is at an end.”

For Rochefort’s death has not erased the very real danger Armand’s relationship with Jean puts them both in. Rochefort had merely leveraged the existing penalties for sodomy to hold against Jean; they had not been of his invention. Jean cannot simply stay here as long as he wishes.

“That excuse ends when we say it ends,” Armand says. “Jean, think. How is Louis to learn that Rochefort is dead, if we don’t tell him?”

Jean starts. He looks back up at Armand, this time in hope.

Armand continues. “You know he’s dead. I know. Jussac knows. That’s it.”

“The Red Guards?”

“Never enter the chamber. They’ll continue standing guard there for as long as I order them to, never questioning.”

“The attendants? The servants who were feeding him and cleansing him?”

“The same servants who wait on us in these halls.”

The loyalty of those servants is absolute, Jean knows. They already hold the secret of their master’s preference for stocky, scarred soldiers with jagged edges and battered dreams. They had gone with Armand out of Paris, when he’d had to pretend to be dead, and kept that secret, too.

If the servants won’t tell, and the Guards won’t tell, and Armand won’t tell – who’s to say Rochefort isn’t still alive, an unquiet revenant beneath the Palais-Cardinal’s grounds, giving Jean the grounds to remain where he wishes?

“It can still only last so long,” Jean says slowly. “Even Louis will wonder if you claim to have kept Rochefort alive for a month. And he’ll want me on his Council before too much longer.”

“France would fall apart if I were to cloister myself for a month,” Armand admits. “Even as it is, I’ll have to start attending court again for part of the day soon. But Louis will easily accept a week, and he’ll accept two without much more difficulty. If you need longer than that, we’ll invent another ruse.”

“No.” Jean shakes his head. Now that his moment of panic has passed, and he’s realized he doesn’t need to depart immediately, his rational mind is reasserting itself. “No, we’d be better spent putting our minds to devising reasons for me to visit regularly.”

Armand smiles. Jean realizes with a surge of fondness that that expression on Armand’s face is pride. “Just so. And I think you’ll find that easier than you fear.”

“How so?”

“How many of the courtiers who have chambers at the Louvre actually live there?”

“Very few of them. But they have other houses in town. I haven’t.”

“So have one.”

“What did you have in mind?” Now Jean laughs in genuine amusement. “Shall I buy a house next to the Palais-Cardinal, and dig a tunnel beneath it, as they do it in the novels?”

“I’m sure it could be done,” Armand says, briefly distracted by the thought. Then he shakes his head. “But there’s no need for such extreme measures. Buy any house you please. If you give me the staffing of it, everyone from your valet and your chambermaid to the juniormost hostler will swear on the Virgin that you sleep there every night, and entertain female company besides.”

Jean blinks. He tries to speak, then stops. His lips remain parted in astonishment, but no sound comes out.

Put like that, it all sounds so absurdly simple.

“People will notice that I’m always walking from the Louvre to the Palais-Cardinal,” Jean says, but not because he thinks this objection is insurmountable. Rather, he raises it because he already knows what Armand is going to say.

“I am quite the slavedriver,” Armand agrees. A lighter tone enters his voice now that he sees that Jean is beginning to grasp the possibilities. “As head of the council, I demand much from its members, and as the newest of those members, I’m particularly harsh on you. Why, I hardly ever give you a moment’s rest, with the way I’m always dragging you back and forth on the King’s business.”

Jean can feel the moment when his face breaks into a wide, disbelieving smile.

“And I had hoped…” Armand’s voice trails off for a moment, before coming back more strongly. “Jean, we’ve always had our differences of opinion, and I expect we always will. But we both want what’s best for France. That’s held us together as much as anything else. I had hoped we might be political allies, now that we no longer need to be enemies at court. And some allies, you know, are closer than brothers.”

“I won’t be shy about telling you when I think you’re wrong,” Jean warns, almost breathless with the possibilities. “I’ll argue with you in council just as much as I ever argued with you at court.”

“I expect nothing less.”

“But for the rest of it…” Jean has to stop for a moment to let the enormity of it settle on him. “For the rest of it. Oh, yes. Yes.”

Armand kisses him then, eager and fierce, like he’s been holding it all back but can wait no longer. Jean kisses back in the same manner until lack of air drives them apart. Jean ends up leaning against Armand, Armand’s arms loosely around him, and laughing a breathless, weightless laugh.

“Oh, there is one problem,” Jean realizes suddenly.

“Name it,” Armand says.

“Money.” Jean hates to admit it, but the truth doesn’t bow to his scruples. “Troisville does well enough to keep me at court, especially with my salary, but the price of a house in town – ”

“Don’t even think twice about it,” Armand says, kissing Jean again. “What else is my money for if not this?”

“The glory of God?” Jean suggests. He’s so lightheaded with the relief of a threat defused that the teasing tone comes to his lips easily. And his stubborn pride, which had kept him from accepting many a helping hand in the past, is no match for the true knowledge of Armand’s love. “The betterment of mankind? The advancement of France?”

“I’ll found another holy orphanage and increase the _Académie_ ’s endowment,” Armand swears. “Expand the army. Buy your Musketeers new weapons, if you like. Then will you let me buy you a house?”

“Any house you like,” Jean says, and kisses Armand again.

For a moment the kiss turns heated, and Jean thinks that the passion brewing again between them may finally bubble over. With Rochefort dead and the future looking assured, there’s little holding them apart anymore. But when the kiss ends, Armand puts his fingers over Jean’s lips before Jean can seal them together again.

“Funeral rites,” he reminds Jean regretfully.

Recalled to duty, Jean nods and lets Armand take a step back. He wishes it weren’t necessary – that some other priest could do this duty – but knows, too, that neither of them would entrust it to another. Rochefort is their private demon and cannot be allowed to haunt anyone else.

“Tomorrow then,” Jean says, hardly knowing what he’s promising, but feeling excitement burn in his veins at the thought.

“Tomorrow,” Armand agrees. He kisses Jean once more, but chastely, and Jean understands it to mean _good night_.

They part after that. Jean finishes changing for bed; Armand goes back to his own rooms to change into ecclesiastical robes before leaving to give Rochefort funeral rites. After finishing his own ablutions, Jean lays in the sumptuous bed and listens to Armand move about his chambers. The connecting door muffles but doesn’t silence those noises completely. Then comes the sound of Armand’s door closing and his soft footfalls as he walks down the corridor, out of the private wing and into the main house. Jean had meant to blow out the candle then, but his eyes slip closed without his permission, and he sleeps.

It’s only when he wakes the next morning and stretches, smiling with the simple animal pleasure of a good night’s sleep, that Jean realizes he’d forgotten to be afraid of his nightmares.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter count has gone up again. I'd say that seven will definitely for-sure be the last part, but that's what I thought about parts four through six, so at this point I promise nothing. Sorry.
> 
> If you're enjoying this still, I'd really appreciate hearing it. This is difficult to write, and I could really use the encouragement.

The days slip by more sweetly after Rochefort is dead. Jean orders himself to take each day as it comes, and each hour and each moment, rather than risk getting swept up in the drag of the past or the pull of his future. His past must sleep, and his future is not yet awake: Jean exists in the space in between, carved out for his especial benefit at a price he dares not contemplate too deeply.

Armand cannot spend all of this time with him. Cardinal Richelieu is called back sooner to the work of God and France. But the fiction of Rochefort’s continued torture is maintained. Richelieu attends court daily. Beyond that he conducts his work from the Palais-Cardinal, where Jean may remain at his side, though not wholly in his thoughts.

Jean doesn’t mind it as much as he might have supposed. Time passes faster when he doesn’t dwell, and not dwelling is made easier when he may recline on his chaise with a favored novel while the Cardinal writes sermons and letters to his bishops, or when Jean walks in the gardens at dusk after the First Minister leaves for court to manage the work of a nation. Jean consciously abandons any effort to keep track of time, and lets the days slip through his fingers like beads from a string, unvarying and unremarked.

It’s peaceful. He likes it. One day the time will run out, and he’ll be returned to the world. Until then he drifts, warm and safe and comforted by the man whose love has twice redefined his world.

He doesn’t raise the matter of fucking again. True, Rochefort is dead, and Armand’s conditions have nominally been met. And yet the time is somehow not right. In the golden light of late afternoon Jean kneels for Armand again, reveling in the soothing pressure of Armand’s collar around his neck, basking in the freedom to serve without pain. But the drawers of Armand’s wardrobe remain closed. The cabinets with their toys remain hidden. Sometimes all Armand lets Jean do is kneel at Armand’s side and rest his head against Armand’s leg, while Armand pets him and praises him and lulls him to rest. Sometimes they go further. Jean relearns the press of Armand’s flesh, the taste of his seed, the gentle truth of his praise. Jean begins to remember how to open himself up without flinching. Sometimes he even remembers that what will come next will be a caress rather than a blow.

In the dark of the sky long past midnight when Richelieu returns from the glittering court, he passes through Jean’s rooms to reach his own, eschewing the door from the corridor that would take him there directly. Richelieu will lay his hand on Jean’s brow or shoulder or back and murmur a prayer. Jean will remain still as if sleeping. But through slitted eyes he will see again the Richelieu of before, bejeweled with power and bedecked with strength, and fall back into slumber comforted by the presence of his true protector.

Jean learns that a week has passed when he joins Armand in the small chapel in the private wing of the Palais-Cardinal for a private Mass. Jussac is present too, as are some other members of the small household whose secrets prevent them from attending services elsewhere. Jean watches Jussac for much of the service and is relieved to see Richelieu press his hand warmly when offering him the bread and wine. Whatever had been between them, it’s been forgiven. Life is resuming its correct shape. Grass grows green even over graves; Rochefort’s scars are being healed, slowly but surely, by that same grace which smooths over all things.

That afternoon, when Armand joins Jean in his chambers and holds out his collar in offering, Jean closes his fingers around it to forestall Armand.

“Bring me something else too?” he asks. He’s shorter than Armand, and as close as they’re standing, has to tip his head back to meet his eyes. Jean knows that it bares his throat to do this, and does it willingly, placing himself completely under Armand’s control.

Armand’s gaze lingers briefly on the smooth hollow of Jean’s throat before coming back to up lock their gazes. “What would you have, beloved?”

“I don’t know,” Jean has to admit. “But – something.”

“What do you want this something to bring you?”

“An edge.” Jean swallows. It feels wrong, without the pressure of the leather around his neck to catch on his Adam’s apple as it bobs, but Armand will soon set that right. “Something not quite pleasure, but still pleasure enough, in the moment.”

“Wait a moment.”

Armand crosses the room and into his own chambers. Jean lets his gaze follow Armand. Jean has taken to leaving that door open as much as he can stand, in an effort to reacclimatize himself to Armand’s chambers. Armand sleeps with Jean in Jean’s, whenever he may, but he cannot always. And Jean would have this be reciprocal.

The wardrobe is not visible through the door from where Jean stands. He cannot see what Armand is doing, what items he might be considering or choosing out to bring back to Jean. Jean chooses not to move in search of a better view. Armand had asked Jean to wait; he will do so, and pass the time in trust.

Armand doesn’t keep him waiting long. He returns and displays three things to Jean.

The first is a plug, small and not curved, but with small bumps all around it. Jean knows how this one works: comfortable at first, but as its wearer moves and the oil begins to dry, it begins to chafe. Not badly. Jean has worn it for an entire day before and come away with nothing worse than a deep unsatisfied yearning. But enough to be a reminder. A mild edge, perhaps.

The second is better. It looks like a necklace, but Jean touches it carefully, knowing that the chain links hide hooks that drag against the wearer’s skin. It can be worn loosely draped around the neck and be only a gentle chastisement, or it can be wrapped more tightly around other body parts, throat or ankles or wrists –

Jean snatches his hand away like he’s been poisoned.

“What is it?” Armand’s voice is still gentle, betraying no reaction.

“Rochefort,” Jean whispers. “He – the wrist-guard…”

Armand’s lips tighten, but he remains calm as he nods and sets the necklace aside. “We will not use this again.”

“I’ll get better – ”

“Still.”

Jean looks away. “Rochefort used all of these on me at one point or another,” he reminds Armand.

Armand sighs. “I would say I would buy new, but…”

Jean shakes his head. “It wouldn’t matter.”

New chains or old, they’d still be chains, and that’s what matters. Armand’s extensive collection is its own curse: there’s very little Armand and Jean haven’t explored, very little Rochefort had left untainted. And those missing things have been left out for other reasons. Reasons that haven’t changed.

“What about this?” Armand holds up the third item.

Jean touches it carefully. It’s a cane, medium length and thin, without much bend to it. It would sting, but not break the flesh. Nor even bruise, if handled properly.

It’s not one of Jean’s favorites. He prefers something with more thud to it. Or he had used to. Rochefort had taken anything Jean might have liked and twisted it past recognition. The tawse has dripped with Jean’s blood; the flogger torn bits of skin from his back. It will be a long time before Jean can bear to go back to those, however much he might miss the shake in his bones.

The cane hadn’t seen much use from Rochefort. It had been too mild for the Comte’s tastes. That leaves it relatively clean. Untouched by the horrors of the last year, it looks suddenly enticing.

“I know it’s unusual,” Armand begins.

“But that’s the attraction,” Jean finishes. “Yes. This.”

Armand sets the cane aside and sits on the bed, tugging Jean down with him. “How? Where? What should I avoid?”

“Rochefort… he treated it as discipline.” Jean shudders in spite of himself, in spite of the warmth of Armand’s arm around his shoulders. “As if I were a prisoner sentenced to the lash, or a soldier guilty of a moderate infraction. He preferred to tie me in place and strike my back. Or…” Jean trails off.

“Or?” Armand prompts after a moment.

“Or it was corrective,” Jean admits finally. “To fix my ‘problem’.”

“What problem?” Armand controls his tone admirably, but Jean can still hear the anger beginning to leak out.

Jean takes a moment to breathe. Then, as steadily as he can, he tells Armand: “Rochefort believed I had a problem with masculinity. That I should not possess it, or that I wished I did not… so he would strike at – at – ” words fail him. Before he can falter, Jean places a hand on his genitals and looks at Armand, trusting him to understand.

No one would ever call the Cardinal slow on the uptake; even less so is Armand to understand threats to his lover. Anger and anguish fight a short but dirty battle across Armand’s countenance. It ends only when Jean leans into Armand in an unspoken plea for comfort. Armand abandons his own feelings to clutch Jean, and if he murmurs prayers and imprecations in a blasphemous jumble against Jean’s hair, there’s no one present who won’t understand and forgive.

Even when Armand finally lets his grip relax enough for Jean to draw back somewhat, his face is still lined with the force of his emotion. Jean tugs him into a kiss. Then he reaches over and picks up the cane, handing it to Armand. Armand stares at it as if Jean’s given him a serpent.

“There is no need to do this,” Armand says almost plaintively. “I am more than satisfied without it.”

“I am not,” Jean says simply.

Armand takes a deep breath. Then the lines on his face rearrange themselves, settle into resolution. “Then how?”

“My buttocks,” Jean says.

“Surely Rochefort – ”

“He had some unusual hangups. He would fuck me, but anything else, in that region – ”

“He wanted to pretend you were a woman,” Armand says in sudden understanding and equally sudden anger.

Jean shrugs. “Yes.” Of all the things Rochefort had done to him, this is by far the least. It had been Armand who had taught Jean to be satisfied with his masculinity. Rochefort had been able to destroy much of what Armand had done for Jean, but somehow, when it had come to this one thing, Rochefort had never found the right combination of word and deed to gain a foothold into Jean’s soul. Inflict pain, yes. There had been times when Rochefort had beaten Jean so badly he’d feared he’d never be right again. But flesh is resilient. And Rochefort’s own prejudices had worked against him, too. To torment Jean in that way had required an admission that that part of Jean’s anatomy exists.

Armand looks like he wants to say something else, but swallows all his words and only nods. Then he reaches into Jean’s nightstand and pulls out Jean’s collar.

Its weight is its own comfort, indescribable and infinitely dear. The circle of leather binds Jean’s world as surely as it does his neck. Wearing it, Jean’s concerns shrink. No longer do his responsibilities encompass his King, his country, his title or his men. They draw nearer. They are within this compound, within these walls, within this bed. Everything else falls away from Jean as water being shed from oilcloth. He breathes deep, weightless. He bows his head, free at last.

Armand begins to undress Jean. Some of the trick of helping comes back to Jean, when he’s in this state; old reflexes that take over, heedless of conscious thought. Memory belongs to the waking world. Like this, Jean is adrift, calm and pliant and content.

When Jean is naked, Armand arranges him, careful to avoid the prone position that Rochefort had favored. Instead Jean rests on his knees, his front lowered, supported comfortably by two thick pillows. He’s not quite kneeling, not quite on his hands and knees, and most definitely not prone. What he is is comfortable. What he is is relaxed. Trusting. Wholly in Armand’s hands, just as he needs.

Head turned to the side, Jean watches as Armand removes outer layers, until he is attired only in a simple cotton robe. Its layers shift enticingly, giving Jean a glimpse of the flesh that lays beneath. Jean’s mouth waters. And his insides tingle, wanting something they remember. The eddy of lust disturbs the still calm of Jean’s soul, beginning to rouse him to passion.

“Breathe deeply,” Armand says gently. “Make any noise you please, except that if you scream, I will cease.”

Jean gives a sleepy murmur of assent. He’s not tired, and in no danger of falling asleep, but he’s so calm and quiet that it feels much the same.

At least until the first stroke lands. It seems to come out of nowhere, though Jean had watched Armand step to one side, remaining carefully in Jean’s field of vision, and swing. Armand hasn’t pulled back his arm far, nor rocked on his feet to give strength to the blow. It’s little more than a flick of his wrist. By Rochefort’s standards, it is nothing at all. And yet, for Armand, Jean’s nerve endings all light up at once. For Armand, Jean is suddenly alert and alive. The adrenaline running through his veins is eager instead of sour. Anticipatory, not afraid.

After the first stroke come several more in quick succession as Armand warms them both up. The rapid blows sensitize Jean’s skin while simultaneously desensitizing his system. Jean can feel it when the sting begins to transmute into something more akin to pleasure. He remembers how to relax into the blows, accepting them and welcoming them. They start to fizzle under his skin and in his veins. He starts to crave the next.

Armand senses that transition effortlessly. Now the strokes slow but become more precise. Armand begins to layer them atop each other, overriding the surface slap with a deeper burn. He lets more time pass between them. He moves his arm more but his wrist less, changing the effect from a sting to a strike.

Jean breathes as he’s been told. Oxygen is become like a drug, heightening his sensation, until at last comes that perfect blur between pleasure and pain where all sensation is equal.

The strokes stop. Jean almost keens with their loss. He’s been expressing his reactions openly, but never felt the urge to scream; why is Armand stopping?

A cool hand smooths over his reddened ass. Jean moans, and Armand chuckles.

“Some things are blood and bone,” he murmurs. “Some things cannot be forgotten. Roll over for me, beloved. I have something better for you than that.”

Jean obeys, innocent and trusting. The sheets are even cooler on his skin than Armand’s hand had been, and softer, too. They drag exotically when Jean slides upward to make room for Armand on the bed with him. One pillow appears beneath his head, another beneath his ass: he falls into them endlessly, soft clouds of feathers and endorphins bearing him along.

The first slide of Jean’s cock – hard, so hard, throbbing with his need – between Armand’s lips nearly destroys Jean. Jean doesn’t think, cannot think, but would think if he could that there had never been anything that could feel so good as this. It’s warm and wet and gentle and stroking and it’s _Armand_ here with him. Armand’s hands on his thighs and no other bindings holding him down. Armand’s marks that will have vanished from his body before the hour is out. Armand’s authority keeping Jean safe and whole and spilling helplessly down Armand’s throat with a groan trapped in Jean’s own that will never be voiced because he is silent, unable to make a sound, rendered voiceless not by oppression but by simple, complex, endless joy.

* * *

The next night Jean wakes up when the moon rises, disturbed not by Armand’s presence – Armand had passed through an hour ago – but by the sudden knowledge that there is something he must do. He lies there for long moments pondering it. In the darkness everything becomes clearer, these days, and Jean often gains insights that would elude him in the light of day. Now he realizes: it’s time for him to reclaim the last part of himself that had been taken. He doesn’t know _why_ now. But he knows: _now_.

He rises, not bothering to don the robe that lies ready for the morning, and moves unhurriedly to the door that connects his chambers to Armand’s. The door opens soundlessly. Armand’s chambers are darker than Jean’s; Armand closes the curtains before retiring. Jean wants to see Armand. He goes over to where the small taper sits burning against the morning and uncovers it, using it to light the corner brace.

As the light begins to spread through the room Armand stirs. Jean lights only every third candle, keeping the illumination low, brighter than firelight but still much dimmer than day. He wants only enough to see Armand by. Nothing more.

Armand wakes enough to sit partly up in bed, and sees Jean there holding the taper. “What’s wrong?” he calls, quietly, but not so quietly that Jean can’t hear his sudden fear.

Jean smiles in answer, letting his quiet conviction fill the room. “Nothing,” he says. “Nothing, any longer.”

“Would that it were so simple,” Armand says wistfully.

“Tonight it is.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Let tomorrow see to itself.”

Armand’s lips part as if he intends to reply further, but he makes no sound. His eyes are fixed on Jean as Jean sets the taper down and comes to him. Without a word Armand makes room; without a word Jean accepts the offer.

Jean knows what he wants, what he’s come for, but he’s in no hurry to seize it. His own clothes are simple and easily shed. So are Armand’s. Jean revels in the slide of skin against skin. He winds curls of the wiry hair on Armand’s chest, even whiter than that on his head, a more sure sign than any of Armand’s age. Neither of them are young in body. But Jean feels young again in soul, the curious sense of youth that comes from freedom and peace and God’s grace.

Armand occupies himself pressing his lips to every inch of Jean’s skin that he can reach. Jean encourages him, even drawing his attention to the changes that Rochefort had wrought. By day Jean shies from even admitting that he carries these scars, and Armand does not press, will not press, is afraid to press. By day Armand is angry. At night he’s only regretful, and Jean is only resigned. Armand traces the two faint scratches across Jean’s shoulderblade that are all that remain of Rochefort’s attempt to write his name into Jean’s skin. He dips his tongue into the pockmarks on Jean’s lower back where the weighted tips of the flogger had torn out chunks of skin. He presses a soft fond kiss to Jean’s temples, where the various bridles and bits Rochefort had forced on Jean have left tiny silver scars visible only when Jean parts his hair and the observer comes in close. Jean himself can’t see them; even with a mirror the angle is wrong. Milady had had to tell him they exist after bandaging them night after night.

Only Armand will ever be that close to that part of Jean’s body again. Those scars aren’t deliberate, like the others. They’re merely carelessness on Rochefort’s part. Now they belong to Armand. A secret about Jean’s body that only Armand knows.

Jean takes his own accounting of his body and finds that it will do. He’s never been comely, and he’d been scarred well before he’d met Armand. Armand hadn’t minded then. Armand tells Jean now, with each gentle press of his lips, that he still doesn’t mind. Rochefort’s leavings are only skin deep. Jean’s legs still carry him. His arms still guide his sword. His eyes still see, his ears still hear, and his heart still knows love. The rest are only trappings, immaterial to God.

And despite Rochefort’s best efforts, despite his relentless physical and emotional abuse, Jean still feels desire. His cock still fills at Armand’s touch and his balls still ache to spill his seed on Armand’s expensive bedsheets. He still longs to feel Armand filling him up from within. As Armand had said, tomorrow things will not be so simple. But tonight they are, and tonight is all that matters.

“I trust you’re well stocked?” Jean asks playfully, reaching over to the drawer set into the small table beside the bed.

“Always,” Armand says in reply.

Jean studies the contents of the drawer. To one side rests his collar, safe in Armand’s keeping just as Jean is. The other side contains a small jar, well-made but innocuous.

As a young soldier Jean had used all the usual lubricants resorted to by desperate youths and callous men. He’s been fucked with butter stolen from the purveyor’s tent and cooking grease saved from campfire stews. He’s been fingered open with spit and sucked his partner’s cock hard before taking it roughly in the alleys of a small rural town where his regiment had been encamped. With Rochefort, Jean had even learned to wish for spit. But with Armand he’s never had to wish for anything. Armand is vain of his moustaches for more reasons than just his fastidiousness of appearance: the tallow he uses to twist them to a point has other uses, too. Jean hadn’t been able to believe his own nerve endings the first time Armand had taken him using it to ease the way. Years later, Jean had grown so used to the consideration that he’d torn open and bled like a virgin after Rochefort’s first assault.

Armand has never bled. Not like that. Not in that terribly intimate way. Jean’s reflexive jealousy is tempered by reflection. He’s grateful to think that this is a burden Armand will never have to bear. If Jean had been offered the choice, he’d take that pain upon himself to protect Armand, every time.

And tonight neither of them have to bleed.

“Jean?”

Jean picks up both the jar and the circle of leather and nudges the drawer closed. He turns back to Armand and smiles. “Just thinking about how much better things are now.”

Armand takes the collar as Jean holds it out to him. “What do you want?”

“I want you,” Jean says. “And then I want you to have me. And I want it to feel good. All the way good. Just pleasure. Nothing else, not tonight.”

Armand nods. He holds up the collar, and Jean bows his head, but then Armand pauses. A finger slides under Jean’s chin and makes Jean look up at Armand.

“Even with pleasure, the rules are the same,” Armand reminds him. “If you are in any way uncomfortable, or afraid, or troubled – ”

Jean ducks his head to catch Armand’s finger between his teeth and nibbles it gently. “I know.”

“All right.” Armand tugs his finger free, smiling as Jean lets his teeth scrape over the pad of it on its way out, and settles Jean’s collar where it belongs.

Freed, Jean lets himself tumble back down to the bed. Armand kisses him possessively. His hands are everywhere, or at least that’s how it feels: touching, branding, claiming. The weight of him is pleasant, not confining. Comforting. Jean bucks up under him to feel Armand exert more of his strength. And to test Jean’s own control. There are no restraints here. There haven’t been since Armand’s return. It will be a long time, probably, before there are restraints again. In the meanwhile Jean restrains himself. He doesn’t flip Armand off and knee him in the groin. He doesn’t twist and rake Armand across the eyes. He doesn’t bring his hands up to seize Armand’s vulnerable neck and squeeze. Jean embraces the knowledge of Armand’s presence and his own trust. He relaxes and gives Armand his perfect surrender.

Something nudges against Jean’s side. The small jar of tallow digs into the soft flesh just beneath his floating rib. Armand picks it up and slides to kneel on the bed next to Jean, unscrewing the lid and going to dip his fingers inside.

Jean stops him before he can. “I’d like to,” he says. “If I may.”

“Of course,” Armand says at once. He hands Jean the jar. Then he arranges himself comfortably on his stomach at Jean’s side, resting his head on his folded arms and watching Jean peacefully and with no evidence of urgency.

It’s another gift: the ability for Jean to go slowly, to take his time, to control the pace. Jean scoops up some tallow. He rubs it between his fingers to warm it, another kindness learned from Armand early in their association. His other hand he lays softly on Armand’s back. They give to each other what they wish to receive in turn: Jean would be startled, possibly even frightened, by hands accosting him out of nowhere, however gentle the touch. So he runs his hands down Armand’s body lightly, maintaining the connection and giving plenty of warning before his wet fingers slide between Armand’s cheeks.

In the later years of Jean and Armand’s relationship, Jean had been accustomed to being taken by Armand. Armand could slide two fingers inside Jean easily, spread him with a few quick motions, and enter Jean with his own well-slicked cock in a matter of moments. Armand had never been in such good condition. He’s thin skin and fragile bone, here as everywhere else. Narrow. And Jean had asked for this act so rarely that frequency of exercise had not made up for nature’s deficiency. All of that had been true even before a year spent apart.

Jean takes his time. He slides his fingers over the entrance to Armand’s body gently, coaxing the tight ring of muscle apart, before he even dares to dip one blunt fingertip inside. It would be easier if Jean’s fingers were more like Armand’s, slender and stained with nothing worse than ink. Instead they’re thick and calloused from handing a sword. The smaller two, pinky and ring, are crooked from having been broken in the past. Not anyone’s first choice for such a delicate job, Jean wouldn’t think. But Armand’s breathing remains deep and even. His gaze stays on Jean like a blessing, and the small smile that tugs on the corner of one lip keeps Jean moving slow but steady.

Jean wants to keep doing this. Keep watching the play of pleasure and desire on Armand’s face. But if he does Armand will grow too sensitive to continue. Instead Jean withdraws his finger reluctantly and scoops up more of the tallow, using it to begin to work a second finger in.

By the time Armand is stretched enough to take two fingers, he’s panting every breath. Jean is grateful now for the thickness of his fingers; it means Armand’s stretched enough to take him, and Jean doesn’t need to risk oversensitivity by continuing. Of course it helps, too, that Jean’s cock is comparatively small. That had been a source of trouble in his youth. Shame, to his father, who’d blamed it for Jean’s deviant preferences. Mockery, from his fellow soldiers, who’d competed for status with increasingly outrageous tests of manhood. Casual disdain from the working women whose time the young Jean had purchased. Not-so-concealed smugness and superiority from the male lovers Jean had fallen in with, before coming to Paris. Before swearing off sex entirely, disgusted with himself and brimming with self-hatred. Before Armand.

Armand had taken Jean as he had been, and as he had become. But Rochefort. Rochefort –

“Jean,” Armand says. He rolls onto one shoulder and catches Jean’s trembling wrist with his freed hand. “There is no one here but you and I.”

Jean steadies under that touch. Breathes more deeply. Nods.

“And I feel myself to be quite ready,” Armand adds by way of further reassurance. He rolls the rest of the way over, so he’s on his back, and spreads his knees wide.

Jean nods again. He dips his fingers into the jar of tallow once more, for himself, this time. With mostly steady strokes he slicks himself up. His erection has flagged, but he thickens again under Armand’s gaze, under his own rough fingers.

 _Quickly_ , Jean thinks. Before he loses it again. He lunges forward, somewhat clumsily, but he’s nothing but gentle as he nudges into Armand.

Armand’s breath catches and holds as Jean enters him, but he encourages Jean to continue with soft wordless moans and the steady reassuring grip he takes on Jean’s left hand. Jean braces himself against Armand’s knee with the other, focusing on the sensations in his body as an alternative to the emotions waging war in his heart and soul.

Armand is warm and welcoming around him. But he’s also tight, so tight Jean hardly dares move. Jean rocks back and forth slightly, biting his own lip to maintain control. He wants to thrust. He wants to take. He wants to move his hips forward, drive into the willing body beneath him and slake his need. But if he can be patient Armand will relax.

Sex is pain. Intercourse is pain. Taking cock is pain. Rochefort is just the latest in a long line of men who’d drummed that fundamental truth into Jean’s soul. When Jean’s father had discovered his deviant preferences and given him to the whores in Bordeaux, when Jean’s first lover – an older soldier who’d seemed worldly then – had bent him over in an alley between taverns, when Rochefort had kicked his knees out from under him in an antechamber in the Louvre after one meeting and before the next and refused to do so much as spit – every time it had hurt. Because his lovers had put their own desires above Jean’s comfort.

If Jean can be more than his lusts, Armand will not have to bleed.

“Beloved,” Armand says softly after a moment. He squeezes Jean’s hand. “You’ve stopped.”

“Don’t want to hurt you,” Jean gasps.

“I won’t be hurt. You did an excellent job of preparing me.”

“I – it’s been so long. What if you – ”

“I will tell you if there’s any danger.”

Jean doesn’t answer.

“Do you believe me?” Armand prompts him.

“Of course,” Jean says instantly.

“Then what?”

Jean lets his head tip forward, so that he can cast his eyes down and not have to look Armand in the face. “I don’t trust myself,” he whispers.

“But you trust me?”

Still without looking, Jean nods.

“Then you’ll do as I say, won’t you?”

“Of course,” Jean repeats.

“Then move.”

Jean tries. He tries so hard to obey. But his fear is greater than his love; his muscles lock up, and he remains still.

He waits for Armand to express his annoyance. To sigh or huff or tell Jean to pull out, they’ll try again another day. Already the mood seems to be shifting; less intimate and erotic, more uncomfortable.

Armand does none of those things. His voice is impossibly gentle as he says, “Let us start smaller. You’re about halfway inside me now. I want you to slide the rest of the way in.”

“I – ”

“Just that. Just the rest of the way. Can you do that, Jean?”

“I…” Jean grits his teeth. Reminds himself of how carefully he’d prepared Armand, how generously he’d stretched his lover and slicked himself.

 _You can do this_ , he tells himself.

It still seems to take forever. It’s perhaps two inches, and never has Jean been so grateful to be small as in this moment, when even two inches stretches to eternity. But eventually Jean’s done it. He’s buried in Armand, balls flush against Armand’s flesh, breathing as if he’s run a marathon.

“Good,” Armand praises. “You feel wonderful inside me. So pleasurable. You fill me up so well.”

“It doesn’t hurt?” Jean still can’t bear to look up at Armand. His gaze is fixed on where their bodies meet, searching frantically for signs of tearing, of stretching, of pain-to-be.

“Only pleasure,” Armand promises. His voice is full of rich tones, communicating better than words how true that is. “Would you like to keep giving me pleasure?”

“Oh, yes,” Jean breathes, heartfelt.

“Then listen to my voice. I know you’re frightened. I’ll help. You only need to do as I say. I know if I’m in pain, don’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Then if you do as I say you can be sure you aren’t hurting me.”

Yes. Yes, that makes sense. Jean can accept that.

“Pull back. Slowly. Not all the way. Leave the last inch or so inside.”

This direction is easier. It’s less likely to cause Armand to tear, and the flare of Jean’s cock will drag pleasurably over Armand’s prostate.

“That feels so good,” Armand praises. “You’re doing very well. Breathe deeply. Can you push back in? Slowly, for the moment. Yes. Just like that. Wonderful.”

Armand’s voice catches on the last word. Alarmed, forgetting his own embarrassment, Jean’s eyes fly up to meet Armand’s. He does so in time to see the pleasure chase itself across Armand’s face. It’s a glimpse of beauty after a year of ugliness, a cherished memory brought to life again, to be treasured and kept safe in Jean’s soul.

“Now pull out,” Armand says, holding Jean’s gaze as securely as he’s still holding Jean’s left hand. “A little less slowly, perhaps.”

Jean obeys. Under Armand’s precise direction, he rocks in and out, slowly building speed. It grows easier to obey with every thrust, as he sees the pleasure grow on Armand’s face, and hears the even cadence of Armand’s speech stutter slightly with every press on Armand’s prostate. Armand’s body relaxes around Jean, and Jean relaxes in his turn, growing pliant and giving himself up to the serenity that comes with trust and obedience.

“Faster now,” Armand encourages. “Find your own pleasure. You’re close, aren’t you?”

Yes, Jean is. As Armand relaxes more, and Jean moves faster, the old familiar fire begins to flicker in Jean’s belly. It builds up slowly but surely, stoked as much if not more by Armand’s words of love and encouragement as by the direct physical stimulation he experiences.

“Come as soon as you are able,” Armand instructs. “I want to feel you fill me up. I want you to leave a piece of yourself with me that I can carry for a time. You are so precious to me; I love you.”

The cry torn out of Jean at this is entirely involuntary and raw with more emotions than Jean could possibly define. He can feel his eyes widen and his breath grow tight; his hand spasms around Armand’s. His last few thrusts are almost wild. Then he’s coming, spilling inside Armand, inside and around and down Armand’s thighs as he pulls out almost before he’s done so he can fling himself into Armand’s arms and be held while he shakes.

He’s terrified. Despite everything he’s sure he’s hurt Armand somehow.

“No, no,” Armand murmurs. His own voice is a little ragged, but he keeps talking. “I am well. Very well. You were very careful. I was safe with you.”

Safety. Yes. That’s all Jean wishes for. To give, and to have.

That thought leads to another, and Jean remembers what’s to come next. He takes a steadying breath and tugs on Armand’s hands.

“Me,” Jean says. “Me now.”

“Take a moment,” Armand says.

“No. Please, now.”

“There’s no need to hurry.” Armand pushes himself onto his side and up on one elbow, with some effort visible in his movements. “Beloved, no one will take it from you if you don’t consume it all at once.”

That one hits Jean low in the gut; he gasps, suddenly vulnerable and exposed in a way he hadn’t bargained for – in a way the physical intimacy nor even the collar around his neck had prepared him for. Instinctively he curls up around himself, seeking to hide, seeking to protect.

Armand’s hands are warm against Jean’s arms; Jean shrinks under them, thinking at first that Armand means to pull Jean out of his cocoon. Armand only tugs Jean closer and adds his own layer of protection, wrapping his arms around Jean in turn and holding Jean tight while he shakes through the worst of the aftershocks. Another reservoir of pain and fear has burst open from the depths of Jean’s mind where he’d buried it. It pours out of him in the tremble of his fingers, the gasp of his breath, the tears leaking unwilling through tight-closed eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Jean says at last. It rasps out through his strained throat. He doesn’t want to be apologizing, not when things were supposed to have been getting better.

“Nothing happens all at once,” Armand says. “Not good things, and not bad things, either. Rochefort had you for twelve months. It will take longer than twelve days to undo that.”

Armand’s voice is calm and reasonable; he sounds so sure of himself, so reassuring. And yet what Jean listens to hardest is the undercurrent of emotion. Armand can speak with the tongues of angels and fool most of the world. But Jean always hears what he tries to hide. Jean hears regret. Anguish. The all-too-familiar self-loathing, and a hatred that has already outlived its target. That hatred will be Rochefort’s true legacy. Long after Jean has healed, long after Rochefort’s body has moldered away, Armand will still hate the Comte.

Those emotions do more to comfort Jean than the most confident speech ever could. More than reassurance Jean craves the knowledge that he isn’t going through this alone. That Armand is at his side, even in this.

Armand doesn’t say anything further. Perhaps he senses Jean’s thoughts, or perhaps his simply exhausted his current repertoire of comforting nothings. He just continues stroking his fingers up and down Jean’s back until his muscles relax somewhat and his spine unbows.

“Would you like to continue?” Armand asks.

Jean wants to say yes. He does. But after a moment he shakes his head _no_ , rueful but resigned. “I’d better not. Do you need…?”

“I am fine,” Armand assures him. Jean accepts this without further question. Pressed as close together as they are, Jean can tell that Armand is no longer physically aroused.

“Can I stay here with you?” Jean asks instead.

“Of course, if you wish to,” Armand says. In the flickering candlelight his face goes through several emotions in rapid succession. He settles on saying: “I always desire to have you near.”

Jean smiles at this. Faintly, but he smiles.

Armand smiles back. “Wait here a moment,” he says. He slides out of bed carefully, keeping the warmth their bodies had created trapped with Jean, and taking caution too for the state of his own body. Jean watches as closely as he can in the candle-light. Armand doesn’t limp. He only walks somewhat more carefully than is normal.

Armand pours water from the pitcher into the small basin and dips a handy cloth in it, which he uses to wash himself off. He brings a second cloth to Jean and does the same for him. Jean accepts these ministrations meekly. When they’re both clean, Armand puts out the candles and rejoins Jean in bed.

Jean rolls into Armand’s arms as soon as he can. Armand slides one hand up to play with the soft hairs at the base of Jean’s spine. By moonlight alone he undoes the clasp on Jean’s collar and sets it aside.

“Not overnight,” Armand reminds him, though Jean hadn’t protested aloud.

“I know,” Jean sighs.

“Will you be able to sleep?” _Sleep here_ , Armand means. Sleep in Armand’s chambers. In the rooms Rochefort had taken and profaned. In the torture chamber Rochefort had built.

Enemies hide behind every curtain. Memories loom large in the shadows, waiting to leap out and cut Jean to ribbons. Jean buries his face in Armand’s chest and closes his eyes, shutting them out, breathing in the familiar scent.

Armand’s arms wrap around him again. The one fortress Rochefort had never had a chance to challege; the one fortification left intact.

“If you’re here,” Jean says.

Jean’s afraid, despite his best intentions, that it will turn out to be a lie. But at some point his eyes must close, because when they reopen, it’s day.


	7. Chapter 7

With the touchstone of Mass behind him, Jean becomes reminded again of the passage of time. They’re well into the second week now since Armand’s return, and the excuse of Rochefort’s torture will be wearing thin. When asked, Armand admits that the King is beginning to speak of convening his council soon.

“He’s not insisting,” Armand is quick to add. “In truth, his Majesty seems to be enjoying the holiday from his responsibilities. He’s speaking of going hunting. I encouraged him – he could spend the rest of the week away with no real harm done.”

“Just the opposite, since his absence will give you a freer hand,” Jean murmurs. Armand quirks a smile at him, admitting nothing, but not denying it, either.

“When the King returns, though…” Armand sighs. “Our time draws short, beloved.”

“We can bear the time apart until I can move into a different residence,” Jean says bravely.

“Time?” Armand pauses in his turn about the room, looking at Jean with an air of surprise. “Do you wish for time?”

Jean blinks. “A residence to be bought, servants to be found, a household to be established – surely these things _take_ time.”

“They do?”

Jean’s surprised into a laugh. He’d forgotten that for someone like Armand, rich in money and power and the King’s favor alike, _waiting_ for something that can be bought must be unfamiliar indeed.

“Have you chosen already, then?” Jean asks, keeping his tone playful. “Where am I to live, my Lord?”

“I would not presume to dictate that to you,” Armand says stiffly. He’s on his grandest dignity, which means he feels embarrassed, or possibly exposed. Jean softens immediately.

“I know that,” Jean soothes. “And you know that I have no real requirements, except that I can easily maintain appearances. What did you mean, then? I had assumed finding a suitable situation would take time, but I had forgotten how easily your name opens doors.”

That might be said to be flattery, but it causes some of the tension to flow out of Armand’s body, for which Jean would do much more than speak pretty words. Besides, Treville’s a politician now, God save and protect him. He’ll have to get used to pretty words.

“There are four properties, available for sale, that might be suitable,” Armand says. “I had thought that we might visit them. If you’re willing.”

“Together?” Jean can’t keep the frisson of fear from skittering down his spine. Rochefort’s entire hold on him had been predicated on his need to keep his relationship with Armand secret. To suggest that they go house-hunting together –

“Calmly,” Armand murmurs. He’s closed the distance between them, and his hand on Jean’s arm is soothing. “Think. The world knows that your income doesn’t extend to the purchase of a residence in Paris, or else why did you live in the garrison all these years, and then accept quarters in the Louvre? Any attempt to conceal where the funds for this purchase originate is doomed to failure, and dangerously so. The most innocuous thing in the world becomes salacious if steps are taken to conceal it. Meanwhile the most salacious thing becomes innocent if it is paraded about without fear. Therefore we will make the fact that I am the purchaser of your dwelling widely known. And if it is to be widely known, it would be seen as rather odder than not if I did not accompany you, to see what my money is to buy.”

“People will wonder,” Jean whispers. “We’ve been enemies for so long – ”

“Say rather, rivals. All Paris knows what I do to my enemies.”

That’s true. More than true. When Cardinal Richelieu has an enemy he destroys them. Therefore the Captain of the King’s Musketeers cannot possibly be an enemy, for he still lives, and retains his position and his influence.

“Your seat on the council is already being partly attributed to my influence,” Richelieu adds. “Few would think that Louis would appoint you over my objections; therefore I must have consented, at the very least. And then you accepted my hospitality during this transition. The shrewd at court have already put us down as allies. They call it a wise move on both our parts, if you care: you benefit from my patronage and political acumen, and I benefit from your reputation of honesty and unshakeable fidelity to the King.”

“And these soothsayers are believed?”

“They will be once it’s seen that I bestow upon you a mark of my favor.”

“Meaning a house.”

“Just so.”

“So they’ll take it as a bribe.” The idea leaves him queasy.

“No,” Richelieu says patiently. “They’ll take it as a gesture. We all do this, Jean. When a man wishes to court a woman he brings her flowers, sits next to her at the salon, holds the door when she exits a room. If the woman accepts she flutters her fan at him, smiles at him, lets him take her hand and rebuffs all others. These are signals. They proclaim to others that that man and that woman have entered an accord. It is the same in politics. Who sits next to whom, who speaks with whom in a quiet moment, who invites whom to dine and hunt and patronize their nephews. Signals.”

“You’re not inviting me to dinner,” Treville snaps.

“I’m not a tradesman seeking to marry a mercer’s daughter,” Richelieu says. “To whom much has been given, of him much will be required. My gestures have always been and _must be_ grand. Especially given my recent absence and need to reconsolidate my position; and all the more so, with the public history between ourselves.”

“And a house will accomplish all this?” Treville wonders doubtfully.

“Barely,” Armand murmurs. He slides his hand up Jean’s arm to settle on his shoulder, and his thumb strokes the hollow of Jean’s neck. “I may have to give you other gifts, too.”

Jean shivers again, this time from the feeling of gentle pressure against his throat. But: “Restrain yourself,” he begs. “I wouldn’t know what to do with – with anything like that.” He thinks of the finery he’s seen the peacocks of Louis’ court adorn themselves with. Silks and velvets, diamonds and rubies. Ruffs of ermine and horses with bloodlines that date back centuries.

“I wasn’t talking about fripperies,” Armand says. “But we can discuss that another time. For today, would you like to look at houses?”

“You’re certain it won’t harm us?”

“Positive,” Richelieu promises.

* * *

Richelieu is so certain, it soon transpires, that he intends for them to drive all over town in his most formal and official carriage. He dresses himself in full robes and urges Treville to do likewise.

“These are cumbersome and awkward and I have no idea how you manage them,” Treville says as they climb into the carriage. His still-unfamiliar ministerial garb catches on the door’s hinge and has to be tugged free with much cursing.

Richelieu is watching it all with a soft smile on his face. “Every boy wearing his first sword has said much the same thing,” he points out.

Treville snorts. “No they haven’t. They’re too thrilled to have it in the first place to complain.”

“Out loud. But to themselves, yes.”

“Perhaps,” Treville allows. He tugs futilely at his overrobe, trying to get it to lie straight over the unfamiliar ornamented belt. “At least swords have a purpose.”

Richelieu closes the door behind them and signals the coachman to start. “A sword’s purpose is to defeat one’s opponent. When said opponent is to be met on the field of battle, it’s very effective. When one’s opponent lives in council, or advises the ruler of another nation, a different weapon is called for.”

“I don’t think anyone’s going to be impressed by my outfit.”

“No more than a general would be impressed by a boy wearing his first sword. But when that boy grows into his weapon and becomes a man, then yes, they will command respect.”

Treville sighs. “This political alliance will be short-lived if you insist on continuing to philosophize at every opportunity,” he warns, the acerbic edge in his voice not quite masking the underlying fondness.

Richelieu hears both and smiles. He also lets the topic drop, for which Treville is grateful. He’s already half-bewildered at the glimpse Richelieu’s already given him of political life. Is power really shared out over cups of wine? Inheritances passed on through political appointments? Alliances cemented with purchases of real estate?

Treville sighs and, once again, puts it from his head. At least at first, he’ll have to rely on Richelieu to help him navigate these shoals. He’ll learn, of course. He can’t rely on the Cardinal forever. At least not politically, or he really ought to retire, and he’s not ready for that yet.

“We’re here,” Richelieu says, drawing him out of thoughts as the carriage comes to a halt.

The first house is a small one that had been left vacant by the death of its former owner, a minor noble. “What criteria did you have for these residences?” Treville asks as they stand in the courtyard. The carriage is drawn up just inside the gate, insignia easily visible. Treville grits his teeth and reminds himself that attracting attention – or at least not being seen to shrink from it – is half of the point.

“Private,” Richelieu says, starting for the door. “Separated from the street, with space between the house and any other structures, and a clear demarcation such as a wall. The buffer is critical, of course.”

“Of course,” Treville echoes. He nods at the servant who opens the door, more deeply than usual in respect for the man’s mourning. These will be the previous lord’s servants, staying on to keep the place up until it can be sold. The most senior among them will then move on, mostly returning to the new young lord to run his household. Some of them will be looking to sign on with the new owner. In that case, they’d better hope the new owner isn’t Treville. Armand will be supplying all the servants Jean will employ.

“Not too close to any major centers, either. Naturally you wish for your quiet. And you wouldn’t want to have to pass through any thoroughfares that would remark your presence on your way to the Louvre.”

Nor the Palais-Cardinal. Treville nods in appreciation.

“For the rest, I simply made sure that the residence had all the necessary components. Stabling, carriage-house – ”

“I don’t need a carriage,” Treville protests, shocked. He doesn’t keep one now and if Armand thinks Jean will let Armand buy him one –

“Ministers of the King’s Council do not ride horseback through Paris to attend court every morning,” Richelieu reminds him gently. “This has nothing to do with you and everything to do with your position. You must maintain it with its trappings, or its power and value will vanish.”

Treville grits his teeth and lets his breath ebb slowly out from his nostrils. Richelieu is right. He has to remember that not everything is about their relationship, and let his stubborn pride relax outside the bedroom as well as within.

Richelieu sees Treville unbend and nods. Then he gestures to the main stairwell. “Would you like to look over the place?”

The first residence doesn’t inspire; nor does the second catch either of their fancies. Richelieu likes the third one, but Treville isn’t as taken. It’s a former hotel. The construction is good, and there would certainly be no shortage of servants’ accesses, kitchen space, or guest rooms. But the amount of space is overwhelming. Treville would prefer a smaller establishment, and says as much.

“One more,” Richelieu reminds him, and has them driven to the fourth location.

They drive up to a beautiful old house, not too large, but well-maintained and obviously from the previous century. There is a small flower garden arranged around the carriage-loop and the steps that sweep up to the house are stone instead of brick.

“Who lived here?” Treville asks, starting up them.

“A painter,” Richelieu says. He looks regretful. “The man had talent. Unfortunately, he also had some dangerous habits. He died of them – not unexpectedly, but far too young – nearly two years ago now. The house has been vacant since then.”

“But not abandoned,” Treville says, observing the signs of recent maintenance. “Who owns the house now?”

“Actually, I do.” Richelieu knocks briskly on the door. A servant in the Cardinal’s livery opens it and bows them both in.

“Did he owe you money?”

“No; if anything quite the other way around, as he had delivered a painting to me just before his death, and I had not yet sent the final installment. But he had no other living friends or family; he was the last of a dwindling line. He told me he’d wanted to give his worldly goods to the Church, but his local priest had excommunicated him as an adolescent, for his preferences.”

“Oh.” Treville swallows. Suddenly the phrase _dangerous habits_ acquires a new meaning.

“I rectified that,” Richelieu adds softly. “When this house is sold, I will give an equivalent amount to the Church in his memory, as he’d wished. And then the same again to a fund for young artists. Since the money comes from me, no one will spurn it.”

“I want it,” Treville says impulsively.

“Look at it first.”

“I will. But you knew I’d want it, didn’t you?”

Richelieu’s lips tug into an embarrassed smile. “There’s a reason we came here last,” is all he admits.

The house is lovely. It’s not furnished at all – the artist must have sold most of the furnishings to support himself – but he’d used the walls as his canvas, and every room features an example of his art. If he’d been a portraitist, that would be off-putting. But the young artist had painted rolling landscapes and beautiful sunrises and the sky at night, bejeweled, the moon hanging low. They’re beautiful. Jean loves them all.

That last image, of the sky full of stars, is in one of the upper rooms that is clearly meant to serve as a bedchamber. Jean will make it his. Then, even when he cannot be with Armand, he can be close to God.

“I want it,” Jean says again, more quietly now, but with no less conviction.

“I know,” Armand says simply.

“What was his name?” Jean turns slowly, taking in the breathtaking sight of the mural. “The artist who died.”

“Simon Durand.”

“God rest him.”

“He has eternal rest. God is with him.”

“And also with us.” Jean turns back to Armand. There’s something in this house, the dreams and splendor that line its walls, that eases something in Jean’s soul. The smile he shows to Armand is brimming with its joy.

“Does it please you?” Armand asks.

“Very much.”

“Then it’s yours.”

“What about Simon Durand’s donation?”

“I’ll have the house appraised, and base the donation on its worth.”

“I’d like to add something of my own. I could never reach to what this place would cost, but I want to contribute.”

“Of course.”

“And Armand?” Jean raises an eyebrow and waits until Armand has given Jean his full attention. “When you commission the furnishings – consult my taste, please, as well as your own.”

Armand laughs. “It shall be done.”

They spend a while longer going over the house, half of it with Jean touching murals with one awed finger and the other half making notes about what needs to be purchased for the house. Jean will have to maintain several guest bedrooms and invite others to stay from time to time. There will need to be dining rooms and drawing rooms and an office. Jean is most interested in the office. It’s the room he’ll likely use most. There’s a beautiful space at the back corner of the first floor, with two full walls of windows looking out onto a little wilderness. Gorgeously realized flowers have been painted between every casement, and on the interior walls a lush green field rolls endlessly away. Jean thinks it would be perfect.

By the time they emerge, the sun is halfway below the horizon, lighting the sky with pinks and reds and golds. Jean blinks the light from his eyes and feels pleasantly tired. It’s been a good day.

Richelieu holds the door for his companion, and the two of them return to the Palais-Cardinal in comfortable silence. Dinner is a relaxed affair. They have it on the veranda, as has become their new custom. That may cause some trouble as the seasons change. But while the weather holds it’s pleasant to watch the last vestiges of the sunset, and best of all, it’s free of memories.

As dinner draws to a close, a familiar mood begins to steal over Jean. It’s electricity dancing through his veins, lust beginning to pool in his stomach, reckless daring jumping with the beats of his heart. He wants Armand. And he wants to get fucked.

Armand can sense it too. Some of Jean’s mood infects him; his movements grow more languid, more elegant. He slows down as Jean speeds up, balancing Jean out. His air grows more mysterious and his smiles more enigmatic. They’re a tease and a dare and they make Jean want to push until Armand pushes back and takes effortless, total control.

Jean sets his fork down with a rattle. “Let’s go to bed.”

Armand raises one well-groomed eyebrow and selects another grape from the center bowl. “We’ve only just dined, my dear.”

“I don’t mean to sleep.”

Armand makes a noncommittal noise in return. “There are a number of other ways we could occupy our time. Productive ways.”

“I don’t want to do any of them. I want you.” Some old instinct prompts Jean to lean back in his chair, to pretend to be relaxed. He lifts a goblet of wine to his lips and tilts his chin up while he drinks it so Armand can watch him swallow. Making a display of himself. Making a show for Armand to watch.

Jean is rewarded by the way Armand’s gaze fixes on him. It’s the same gaze that makes ambassadors tremble, penitents weep, and even makes Louis reconsider his rash plans. It makes the breath catch in Jean’s chest even as his heart beats faster and anticipation starts to fizzle in his veins.

“Tell me what you want,” Armand says softly. It’s couched in the form of a request but Jean hears it as an order, sliding under his skin to open Jean’s innermost soul to Armand’s sight.

“I want you to take me to bed,” Jean breathes. “I want you to undress me and tease me until I can’t string two words together. I want to feel your weight. To be held down and grounded until you’re the only thing I can see and the only air I can breathe. I want to wear your bruises around my wrists tomorrow and still feel the phantom echo of your cock in my ass.” Jean has to stop and breathe through the force of just how much he wants that. He finishes: “I want you to make me yours again.”

Armand’s eyes darken. “Put down your wine,” he says. There’s no longer any question of its being a request; Jean obeys promptly, instinctively, blissfully without thought. “Follow me.”

Jean rises from his chair; Armand comes around the table and guides Jean into motion with a touch on his lower back, possessive and calmly authoritarian. As they pass through the doors back into the Palais-Cardinal, through the private dining-room, Armand pauses. Sally is waiting just inside the door, ready to supply any need they might have while dining. To Sally Armand says: “We are retiring. Tell the maids there will be no need to turn down the rooms tonight.”

Sally doesn’t blink an eye. She bobs a prompt curtsey and murmurs, “Yes, my Lord.”

Armand nods and nudges Jean back into motion. Sally vanishes through a side door into the servants’ hallways to spread the word. Her master and his companion are not to be disturbed until morning.

Sally’s smiling to herself. Jean wonders if Armand knows just how many people are invested in his well-being. Everyone who works in the inner wing of the Palais-Cardinal owes something to Armand that goes beyond wages and a good place. Armand earns loyalty everywhere he goes. He has a knack for it. A gift for finding the people who most need help, and figuring out what to give them.

In matters of state, it lets him learn the secrets of nations, discover the true goals of ambassadors and potentates, negotiate favorable treaties and maneuver countries towards or away from war. In private life, Armand is surrounded by servants and serving-maids alike who would do anything to protect him – including turn a blind eye to his male lover, whom he installs in his mistress’ chambers and kisses openly on verandas in the privacy of his own grounds.

And in his personal life – well, there’s no question that Jean would do anything at all for Armand.

They walk back to Armand’s chambers without dallying but also without haste. Armand’s hand stays warm on Jean’s back, guiding him forwards, steady but without insistence. That’s Armand: he shows Jean the path to walk, but insists that Jean walk it at his own pace. And tonight Jean’s pace is rapid. This is something they both want, and he’s determined that they will have it.

They go to Armand’s chambers. Armand tries to urge Jean to pass the door to the master suite, to go one down into the connecting chambers that have been given to Jean, but Jean resists. Armand sighs when Jean turns the knob and pushes the door open but makes no protest when Jean walks inside. Jean pauses in the middle of the room and turns to face Armand, almost challengingly.

“Here?” Armand asks. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Armand sighs again. But he walks in and closes the door behind him.

Jean begins to turn, to walk the remaining steps towards the bed. Armand reaches around and stops him. He takes Jean by the wrist and turns Jean to face him; his grip is snug but not harsh. Jean can’t help twisting his wrist, arching his palm to feel the pressure of Armand’s grip, its firm and steady force. This grip won’t leave bruises. He wants it to. But that will come later.

“If you grow uncomfortable at any time – ,” Armand starts.

Jean shakes his head impatiently. “I know.”

“Then you will be a little bored while you listen to it again,” Armand says sternly. He raises an eyebrow at Jean and Jean subsides, chastised.

“Yes, sir.”

“If you grow uncomfortable at any time, you will tell me and we will stop. If you scream, we will stop. If you stop responding to me, we will stop.”

Jean shivers and nods. He knows now why that rule is in place. With Rochefort, when Rochefort had pushed him past all tolerance, Jean had simply… frozen. Endured in silence, keeping his pain and fear tightly locked up inside, rigid and unresponsive except to make the gestures and say the words that his tormentor had demanded. Jean knows now why Armand fears his silence. Even if Rochefort would have honored the intention behind a scream, Jean now knows he can be pushed past the ability to make one.

“You’ve asked for a great deal, beloved. Are you sure you don’t want to space some of those things out? There is no need to seize everything at once.”

Jean unsticks his throat. “Please,” he says, unashamed to hear himself plead. “It’s not the same if it comes in pieces. I want it all. I need it all.”

“It may be too much.”

“I can’t promise it won’t be,” Jean whispers, looking down to escape Armand’s stern, compassionate gaze. “But I – if we – less will not satisfy.”

“All right.” Armand lets Jean’s wrist go. “Then we will begin.”

Jean starts to move towards the bed.

“Stop,” Armand says sternly.

Jean freezes. Immediately he’s afraid, but consciously forces himself to relax.

“I like you here.” Jean’s gaze is still downturned; he doesn’t raise it, but watches Armand’s feet move in a slow circle around Jean until they disappear behind his back, only to reappear a moment later. “You look well in my quarters. A fine decoration, wouldn’t you say?”

“Hardly,” Jean says before he can help himself.

“Hmm.” Armand sounds amused. “You make a fair point. Decorations are to be looked at, not touched. And you are most definitely to be touched.”

Armand suits action to words, laying his hands on Jean’s shoulders and stroking gently. Jean feels some of the tension ebbing out of him at even such a mild caress. When Armand’s hands slide down to the fastenings of Jean’s clothing, Jean’s heart speeds up again, but at least as much in anticipation as fear.

At Armand’s direction, Jean stands obediently still, and Armand undresses him as if Jean is no more animate than a statue. Only occasionally is Jean permitted to lift a foot or move an arm. It creates challenges, but Armand seems to relish them. And Jean can feel himself relax under this treatment. It’s not impersonal, but it brings a sense of detachment to the act of undressing, leavening its intimacy with a distance that keeps it bearable.

“There,” Armand says at last, when Jean is naked save for his collar. The room is warm – there’s a noble fire burning, laid by the maids while they were at dinner, no doubt. When Jean shivers, it’s because Armand has taken two steps back and is watching him with frank admiration and lust, not because the room is cold.

“A match for Michelangelo’s _David_ ,” Armand murmurs.

Jean can’t help scoffing.

“You disagree?” Armand smiles. “It’s fortunate, then, that my appreciation doesn’t require your concurrence. Now you may get on the bed.”

Jean scrambles to obey. It takes only a few steps to reach the bed. Out of habit he grasps the posts and begins to haul himself up by main force.

“Stop,” Armand says sharply. Once again Jean freezes, muscles trembling with strain.

“Let go,” Armand orders and Jean does, returning to stand by the bed, bewildered.

Armand approaches the bed, directing Jean’s attention with a wave of his hand. “The steps?”

Jean follows the gesture. There, tucked under the bed, are the small set of steps that are provided for easy access to Armand’s tall four-poster bed.

Jean had ignored them, of course. He isn’t allowed to use them. Rochefort had said –

 _Rochefort_ had said.

Jean can feel his lips parting in dismay. He’s still following that bastard’s orders, even though the Comte is dead and buried.

“Son of a bitch,” he breathes, suddenly furious.

Armand’s hand settles on Jean’s neck, calming and centering. “If I could order you to forget every one of his rules, I would,” he says ruefully. “In the meanwhile, you are certainly to use the steps. And if you find yourself lapsing into any bad habits, alert me.”

“I will,” Jean promises.

Armand gives Jean’s neck a gentle squeeze before stepping back. “Then get onto the bed.”

Jean kneels to tug the steps out from their stored position. Then he climbs into bed, as gracefully as he can, and sprawls on the sheets – hopefully in an enticing manner. He wants to look beautiful to Armand, whatever he may think of himself. He wants Armand to be proud. He wants Armand to be aroused. He wants Armand to love him.

“You know that I love you for more than your body,” Armand says, coming back to the side of the bed. He runs a proprietary hand down Jean’s flank and smiles when Jean shivers. “That being said, I would never deny that you excite me exceedingly.”

Jean arches into Armand’s touch. Armand’s hand settles on Jean’s hip. His thumb strokes the sensitive skin of Jean’s belly and Jean shivers again, half-tickled, half-aroused by the vulnerability highlighted in the gesture.

“And that excites you in turn,” Armand muses, watching as Jean’s cock plumps slightly, half-hard just from being exposed to Armand’s gaze. “I’m pleased to see it.”

Jean relaxes. He knows he shouldn’t worry. He knows that Armand loves Jean’s responsiveness, Jean’s eagerness. But Jean’s insecurities are nearly as old as Jean himself. Rochefort had played on them. Brought them to the fore from where Armand had managed to help Jean bury them. But he had not created them. Jean had been taught young to view his preferences as fundamentally shameful.

Armand had been the first person to tell Jean differently. To encourage Jean to chase pleasure in whatever ways seem best to him, and to lavish praise on the results. Jean had used to think that he’d never have enough of that. Now he knows it for a certainty.

“I love you,” Jean murmurs, all unplanned.

The smile on Armand’s face is worth any price. “And I you.”

Armand climbs into bed himself now. He has to take his hand from Jean’s hip to do so, and Jean whines at the loss of contact. Armand chuckles a little.

“Greedy.”

“I missed you,” Jean says plaintively, and doesn’t miss the way Armand stills in guilt. Jean shakes his head impatiently and reaches out his hands to his lover. “Don’t waste time on sorrow. Prove to me that you’re here now.”

Armand’s expression relaxes into something fond. “Giving me the orders now?”

“ _Please_ ,” Jean corrects himself.

Armand lays down next to Jean, on his side, propped up on one hand. The other hand he splays on Jean’s chest. “I believe, before we began, that you asked to be reduced to a lustful, begging mess,” Armand says. His fingers begin to slide down Jean’s body. “As always, your wish is my command.”

“That isn’t what I – ” Jean starts, then gasps as Armand slaps his stomach lightly.

“Silence now. Speak only to end this entirely, or to beg me for more. And beloved? I will know if you’re sincere in the begging.”

Jean closes his mouth so quickly his teeth clack together and he has work his jaw for a moment to rid himself of the mild discomfort. Armand helps distract him, letting his hand slide down past Jean’s stomach to the tip of Jean’s cock. Armand teases the head, massaging it with clever fingers. The rest of it grows hard rapidly with the peculiar ache that comes from a lack of direct stimulation. Jean’s breath comes more quickly – he can’t help that – but he makes no sound.

Armand hums to himself, watching the pleasure and the ache where it must be displayed across Jean’s face. He changes the motion of his fingers, from a circular massage to a pulling motion, coaxing Jean to greater hardness. His fingers dance nimbly down Jean’s shaft, a quick _tap-tap-tap_ that’s gone almost even before Jean can register it and does nothing to satisfy Jean’s growing desire to be touched. Instead Armand cups Jean’s balls and massages them gently, too.

Jean’s familiar with this pattern of stimulation; it simultaneously sets up a need and fails to meet it. It’s with resignation and not surprise that, after spending what Armand deems to be an appropriate amount of time on Jean’s balls, that Armand moves his hand lover – not to Jean’s straining shaft, which he would dearly love to have held in Armand’s tight grip, but to the entrance to Jean’s body.

Armand rubs over Jean’s hole with just the pad of one of his fingers, making no attempt to penetrate yet. He doesn’t have to: Jean is gasping from this alone, as Armand gently stimulates Jean’s rim, and the tender skin beneath his balls. It’s always been a sensitive area for Jean. The more so, probably, from the abuse the area had suffered in the past, when the careless partners of Jean’s youth had fucked him roughly and left him torn and bleeding. Now Armand plays Jean like a musician plays his instrument. Stroking Jean’s tender skin. Sliding his hand up to fondle Jean’s balls. Bending his neck to kiss Jean, deeply, while Armand’s fingers rub firmly over Jean’s rim and Armand’s tongue mimics above what is desired below.

The muscles of Jean’s thighs begin to tremble with the effort to keep still. When Armand lowers his head to nip at Jean’s neck, Jean cries out, arching up into Armand’s lips shamelessly.

Armand pulls his hand away as if Jean’s cry had been a signal; Jean keens with the loss, trying to pull Armand back. Armand kisses Jean again. Then he moves down to kneel between Jean’s spread legs.

“Breathe,” Armand reminds Jean.

The first touch of Armand’s tongue to Jean’s hole makes Jean shriek. Armand pulls back at once, concern written all over his face. “Jean?”

Jean has to pant for several moments before the white fog of pleasure clears from his brain. “Don’t stop,” he pleads, uncaring that he’s begging already, when he’d wanted to wait, hold out longer. “Please, Armand, please.”

Armand’s face relaxes. He doesn’t answer in words, but buries his face between Jean’s legs again.

Armand takes his time. He doesn’t focus only on Jean’s hole, but as his fingers had done, spreads his attention to include Jean’s perineum and balls. Jean’s cock, still excluded from the proceedings, strains harder and more desperately against Jean’s stomach. Jeans’ fingers twitch to touch himself. He presses his hands against the bedsheets, wishing they were looser so that he could hold them in his grip. At any other time he’d have begged Armand to restrain him, but he can’t – but he wants – but he –

Armand reaches up and gathers Jean’s wrists up with one of his own. Armand’s hand is barely broad enough to encompass both, not enough to exert any sort of grip. But strength is not the point. Jean calms immediately under Armand’s hold. So gentle as it is, it cannot be mistaken for any form of physical restraint, but neither can it be mistaken for a polite suggestion. It is an order; it is merely expressed with action instead of words.

Jean has nothing to fear when he obeys Armand’s orders.

“I’m going to get the tallow out now,” Armand says gently. “Are you comfortable with that?”

“Please,” Jean says again. It’s the only word he knows how to say; he beseeches Armand with his eyes, hoping that their gaze is more eloquent, more reassuring. “Please.”

Armand reaches over with his free hand, never letting Jean’s wrists go. Opening the drawer and extracting the jar is easy enough. Then Armand sets it gently on Jean’s chest.

“You will open it for me,” Armand instructs. “Hold it for me at the ready, so that I can use it however I need.”

“Yes,” Jean breathes.

Armand releases Jean’s wrists. “Now.”

Jean scrabbles with the jar in his haste to obey and nearly knocks it off the bed entirely. When he gets it in his hands he finds his fingers are trembling so hard he nearly can’t open the lid. Perhaps he is more rattled than he lets on. Because he knows what’s going to happen next. Armand is going to finger him open. Penetrate him, for the first time since Rochefort. And not just with his fingers, either. Once Jean is open enough Armand is going to fuck him.

“Tell me it won’t hurt,” Jean whispers, staring down at the closed lid in his hands.

Armand smooths a gentle hand through Jean’s hair. “There will be no pain. Not today. Only pleasure, I swear it.”

Jean takes a deep breath and opens the jar.

“Good,” Armand praises. “Hold it out to me. Yes. Just like that.” He dips his fingers into the jar Jean proffers and coats them liberally.

“Keep it ready,” Armand instructs. Then he slides his slick fingers down, and circles Jean’s entrance.

“Oh God,” Jean chokes as Armand breaches him for the first time. Only the tip of one finger, but it feels monstrous, it feels invasive, it feels impossible. “God, please, _please_.”

“Beloved?” Jean can’t see Armand, with his eyes screwed shut, but he can _hear_ the frown in his voice. “Tell me what you’re feeling.”

“Overwhelmed.” Jean forces himself to breathe.

Armand pulls his hand away. Jean’s eyes fly open. “No, don’t – ”

“You were uncomfortable.”

“Only briefly. Please, Armand.”

“What do you need?”

Jean hesitates. Then he asks, “Help me relax?”

“Of course.”

Armand abandons his place at the foot of the bed, coming up instead to settle down next to Jean again. He takes Jean’s hand and places it over Armand’s heart, where Jean lets himself think he can feel it beating. His own hand Armand lays over Jean’s throat, a light gentle pressure that makes Jean aware of the rise and fall of his chest, the collar snug around his neck, the pulse beating in his own veins.

Jean takes the moment to breathe, to let his fears flow out of him, exhaled along with his doubts. He lets the knowledge of Armand’s presence settle in his soul like an anchor. Armand’s collar around his neck is a beacon, scattering all the shadows that try to come between them.

“All right?” Armand asks softly.

“Yes,” Jean says.

“Do you wish to continue?”

“Yes. Please.”

“All right.”

Armand picks up the jar of tallow from the bedsheets; Jean must have dropped it. Jean watches as Armand rewets his fingers and returns to his position between Jean’s legs.

“Breathe,” Armand reminds him.

“Please,” Jean repeats.

Armand slides his fingers over Jean’s hole again, not trying to penetrate yet, just stroking. And suddenly Jean knows the problem.

“Faster,” he begs. “You’re – when you go slow, I have time to think. Too much time. Just – ”

“I won’t hurt you,” Armand protests.

“You can go faster without hurting me.”

It’s true. Armand admits it by pressing his lips together. But he nods, and presses the first finger inside with a slow but steady slide.

“Oh,” Jean gasps. His head falls back against the pillow. “Oh, yes.”

This may only be one finger, but Jean already feels full, in a way that fills up an empty place inside of himself that he hadn’t known had been missing. Rochefort had churned up Jean’s guts with his cock at every opportunity, and gloried in shoving ever larger objects inside of Treville, from a candlestick to an empty wine bottle. The cork had started to come apart inside Treville as Rochefort had fucked him with the bottle, and pieces of it mixed with blood had come out every time Jean had shit for the next two days. And yet, despite Rochefort’s fixation with Jean’s ability to stretch – or tear, and heal, and stretch again – nothing Rochefort had ever put inside him has filled him the way one single finger from Armand does.

“More,” Jean begs. “More.” If one finger feels like this, what will two feel like?

He doesn’t have long to wonder. Armand takes Jean at his word and slides a second finger in alongside the first. Together they rub Jean’s prostate. Jean sees stars.

“Yes,” Armand murmurs. “Like that. Just like that.”

“Oh,” Jean whispers. He’d forgotten. He’d forgotten how amazing this can be.

“What do you want?”

“More.” Jean’s even beyond shamelessness; he parts his lips and lets the truth come out. “You. All of you. Please.”

“Not yet. You’re not ready.” Armand widens his fingers, rocking them back in forth, opening Jean up further. Jean keens when Armand begins to work in a third.

“Please,” he begs. “Please.”

“Soon,” Armand promises. He works Jean mercilessly, driving Jean to unremembered heights of pleasure while pursuing his own goals.

“Ah!” Jean writhes, humping Armand’s fingers shamelessly, chasing the sensation of fullness and completion.

Armand chuckles throatily, and leans forward, over Jean’s body, to swallow Jean’s cries with his kiss. Jean hardly knows what he’s saying anymore, an incoherent babble of _more_ and _God_ and _Armand_. The pleasure Armand is giving him begins to pale in comparison to his still unmet need. Jean’s body remembers that this is not all there is; there is more, and not just in stimulation to Jean’s neglected cock.

“Do you want me to stroke you?” Armand asks, slowing the movement of his fingers to give Jean the breath to reply. “Or would you prefer to come on my cock?”

There’s no hiding the spike of lust that sends through Jean; not that he would wish to, or try. Jean loves Armand’s clever fingers on his cock as much as he loves them in his hole. Loves, too, Armand’s talented mouth. But above those things he loves – nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. To come without a touch, without stimulation.

Even before Rochefort Jean had been conflicted over his own desires. There are parts of his body Jean can’t bear to have touched at all. His cock isn’t one of them, but still, to experience pleasure without _having_ to touch it –

It had been one of the few things Armand had still been working on, before Rochefort had changed matters so dramatically. Now the idea of coming untouched fills Jean with a breathless euphoria.

“Don’t touch me,” he begs. “Make me fall apart without it.”

“As you wish,” Armand promises. He slides his fingers from Jean and slicks himself up. Then Armand positions himself at Jean’s entrance, one eyebrow raised in an unspoken question.

“Yes,” Jean tells him. His whole body is trembling, but not in fear: it’s all pure unrepressed longing. “Please.”

Armand slides home.

Jean arches so hard he nearly pulls himself right back off again, every nerve alight and singing. Armand’s promises, as always, are good: there is no pain, only endless ringing pleasure.

“Armand,” he breathes, reveling in the ripple of sensation that runs through his body. “Armand. It’s wonderful. Oh, it’s so wonderful. I love you.”

Armand groans then, deep and somehow aching. He thrusts back against Jean almost involuntarily before stilling again, fully sheathed, so close that Jean can feel the trembling Armand would otherwise be able to conceal. “Do you want more?”

“Yes, yes, _yes –_ ”

Armand pulls back, then thrusts again. Jean keens his pleasure.

“More?” Armand doesn’t wait for a verbal response. His next thrust leaves Jean gasping, reveling in the feeling of being so thoroughly claimed. It’s perfect, exactly what Jean had wanted, except – except –

Jean reaches down and scrabbles at Armand’s hands where they’re pressed against the bed, bracing Armand. Armand shifts, gasping, to take his weight on his knees. Freed, Armand lets his hands be tugged and manipulated until they’re loosely encircling Jean’s wrists.

“I want to wear your marks,” Jean reminds Armand. “Press me down. Make me yours.”

“They’ll be visible,” Armand says breathlessly.

“Yes. For a few days. Let me wear them, here, now, while I can. When they fade I’ll go to court again. But for the time we have left – ”

Armand’s fingers tighten on Jean’s wrists, harder, the pressure real and constant and just shy of pain. Armand slides them down so they’re pinned to the bed now and Armand is bracing himself again, using Jean’s wrists as anchor points. When Armand starts fucking him again Jean knows Armand will lose the focus necessary to keep his grip shy of pain. But Jean also knows that once Armand starts fucking him again, the intensity will build to such a point that any sensation will be pleasure, even what would otherwise be pain. Jean will come untouched with Armand’s bruises being pressed into his wrists, Armand’s cock spilling seed like a mark of ownership inside of him, Armand’s love filling up the missing places of himself.

“Please,” Jean begs again, breathless with how much he wants it. “Armand, _please_.”

Whether it’s Jean’s plea that does it or the longing he can feel plain on his face he doesn’t know. But Armand groans again, body shuddering, and starts to move.

Armand starts out slow this time, and gentle, as if he fears Jean might break. But soon enough his thrusts speed up. Jean arches to meet him as often as he can muster the coordination to do so. It doesn’t take long before conscious control fails Jean, and he can only writhe, gasping, as the pleasure builds and builds and _builds_.

The passage of time loses all meaning. Jean is blind to anything but the sight of Armand, deaf to anything but his voice whispering endearments. He feels nothing except joy. Joy and pleasure, a pleasure that builds up within him until it explodes, bright as the sun at midday, obliterating everything but the sense of deep and abiding peace.

Dimly he hears Armand cry out. He feels Armand’s hips stutter, senses the warm splash of Armand’s completion deep inside. He knows when Armand comes to lay with him, resting his weight partly on Jean as Jean had asked, keeping Jean grounded and safe as he drifts. Most of all what he knows is this: Armand will take care of him; Jean need not worry.

Later – moments, minutes, hours later – Jean will swim up through the layers of his soul and surface in Armand’s arms. Armand will welcome him back with a kiss. Jean will return it joyously, using the language of their bodies to return pleasure for pleasure, and express his feelings through a more dependable means than words. But right now Jean simply floats. He is unaware of his surroundings and safe in the knowledge that he needs no awareness. No one can harm him; he needs not defend himself. There is warmth around him, and light, and the gentle steady thump of Armand’s heartbeat in his ear.

He is content. He is whole. He is home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S DONE ::collapses::
> 
> Hat tip to Kat for the loan of Simon Durand, artist. He properly belongs in her awesome fic these three remain. Thanks Kat :)
> 
> There will be at least one more fic in this universe - Rochefort's POV during the year Richelieu was away - and possibly something set a while in the future.
> 
> What a crazy ride. I hope it did not disappoint :)


End file.
